Skinwalker Ranch

In June 1996 the Deseret News ran a story about Terry and Gwen Sherman, who ranched about 480 to 512 acres southeast of Ballard in Utah’s Uintah Basin. They said they had seen strange craft, found circles pressed into the grass and lost seven cattle, three of them found dead with odd wounds. Within months a Las Vegas businessman, Robert Bigelow, had bought the ranch to study it. Since then it has passed through private research, a Pentagon-funded program and a television series, and it is now known around the world as Skinwalker Ranch.

The Uintah Basin

The ranch sits in the Uintah Basin of northeastern Utah, between the Uinta Mountains to the north and the Tavaputs Plateau to the south. It is in thinly settled country near the small towns of Ballard and Fort Duchesne.

The name comes from Navajo belief. A skinwalker, or yee naaldlooshii, is a witch who can take the form of an animal. The ranch is in Ute country, not Navajo country, but the Kelleher and Knapp book “Hunt for the Skinwalker” (2005) reports a Ute tradition that the Navajo once laid a curse on the Ute. The current owner holds “Skinwalker Ranch” as a trademark.

The basin had a reputation for UFO reports long before the Shermans arrived. Joseph “Junior” Hicks, a local science teacher who died in 2020, collected reports for decades. The Utah biologist Frank Salisbury wrote about the basin’s sightings in “The Utah UFO Display”, first published in 1974. Hicks told the Deseret News in 1996 that “over 10 percent of the population of the Uintah Basin has seen something.” In the same article a man from Neola, Leland Mecham, described two long sightings, one in the mid-1960s and one about a decade later.

The Sherman Family (1994-1996)

What the 1996 Newspaper Reported

The Deseret News article is the only account written while the Shermans still lived on the ranch. It says the property had stood idle for seven years after its previous owners died. The Shermans bought it about two years before the article and remodelled the house before moving in. The strange events had gone on for about 15 months by June 1996. The first that Terry Sherman remembered came in April 1995, when he saw a light pass over the trees while checking on a calving cow.

The family described several kinds of craft. They told of a small box-like craft with a white light, an object about 40 feet long, and a huge ship they put at the size of several football fields. One craft gave off a wavy red beam. Lights seemed to come out of orange, circular “doorways” that opened in midair. On one evening they said they saw more than a dozen objects. Gwen Sherman described a light that “just lit the whole side of the mountain up like broad daylight.”

They also found marks on the ground. There were three circles of flattened grass, each about 8 feet across, set in a triangle about 30 feet apart. In another pasture there were smaller holes about 3 feet wide.

The cattle losses were the most serious. Of seven animals lost, four vanished. In one case the tracks seemed to stop at the edge of a field in the snow. Three were found dead. One had a hole in its left eye and no blood. Another had a similar eye wound and a hole cut in its rectum. A third was found in January with a large hole in its rectum. The article says their son had seen it alive five minutes earlier.

Terry Sherman also said that while he was in a field with the family dogs he heard male voices speaking a language he did not know, about 25 feet above him. He saw nothing. The dogs barked and growled, then ran back to the house. The family had not reported any of this to officials.

What Later Accounts Added

Much of what is now told about the Shermans comes from “Hunt for the Skinwalker” by Colm Kelleher and George Knapp, published in 2005. The book uses the false name “Gorman” for the family. It adds stories that are not in the 1996 article. The best known is a wolf about three times normal size that took a calf by the snout through a corral fence. In the book’s account, Terry shot it at close range with a pistol and then a rifle, and it walked away unhurt. The book also tells of the family’s dogs chasing a blue light into the trees. In that account the dogs were never seen again, and only scorched patches of ground were found.

These stories may well be what the family told the authors. They were written down years after the events, by researchers who worked for the ranch’s next owner. They cannot be checked against any record from the time.

The Sale

The Shermans sold the ranch to Robert Bigelow in 1996, after less than two years on it. The price usually given is $200,000.

Robert Bigelow and NIDS (1996-2016)

The Buyer

Robert Bigelow made his money with the Budget Suites of America hotel chain and later founded Bigelow Aerospace. In 1995 he set up the National Institute for Discovery Science, or NIDS, to study UFOs and other unexplained claims. He made the ranch its field station. Its staff and advisers included Colm Kelleher, a biochemist who served as deputy administrator, and the retired Army colonel John B. Alexander.

The Research

NIDS set up cameras and other instruments on the ranch and kept staff there. It published some reports, but much of what is known about its work comes from “Hunt for the Skinwalker”. The book describes years of watching and says that strange events kept happening where the cameras were not pointed. The authors present this as a pattern in itself. Skeptics see it as what one would expect if there was nothing there to film.

The book also says NIDS investigated at least one cattle death on the ranch soon after it was found. It reports that NIDS staff saw lights and other things themselves, though rarely with usable recordings. None of these accounts has been backed by physical evidence released to the public.

The Government Program

In 2008 the Defense Intelligence Agency hired a new Bigelow company, Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS), under a contract called the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program, or AAWSAP. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada had directed about $22 million to the work through the 2008 and 2010 budgets. The public did not learn of it until The New York Times reported the related AATIP program in December 2017. The 2021 book “Skinwalkers at the Pentagon”, by James Lacatski, Colm Kelleher and George Knapp, later described the ranch side of the work.

The Pentagon’s own history of the period, published by its UAP office (AARO) in 2024, says the program looked into an alleged hotspot of UAP and paranormal activity at a Utah property owned by the head of the contractor. It says the DIA “did not seek, nor specifically authorize, this work.” Our AAWSAP program page covers the contract and its papers in detail.

The Hitchhiker Effect

“Skinwalkers at the Pentagon” describes what its authors call the “hitchhiker effect”. They say some people who spent time on the ranch later reported strange events at their own homes, including lights, apparitions and poltergeist-like activity. The idea is that whatever was on the ranch could follow people away from it. It rests on personal accounts gathered by the program’s own staff. There is no independent study of it.

The Sale

Bigelow sold the ranch in 2016 to Adamantium Real Estate LLC. He has not changed his wider view. In 2017 he told Lara Logan of CBS’s “60 Minutes” that he was “absolutely convinced” aliens exist and have visited Earth.

Brandon Fugal and the Modern Era (2016-Present)

A New Owner

For some years the buyer’s identity was kept quiet. The new owner fenced the ranch, blocked the access roads, put up cameras and warning signs, and trademarked the name “Skinwalker Ranch”. In March 2020 the owner was revealed as Brandon Fugal, a Utah commercial real estate businessman best known for Colliers International in Utah.

The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch

Also in 2020 the History channel began “The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch”, from the makers of “The Curse of Oak Island”. The series follows a team led on screen by the astrophysicist and engineer Travis Taylor, with Fugal and the ranch’s staff. They use ground-penetrating radar, drones, thermal cameras, radiation detectors and drilling.

The show has reported radiation readings, GPS and radio interference, and lights in the sky. It often focuses on two areas, a mesa on the ranch and an area its team calls “the triangle”. These results are presented on television. Most have not been published in a form that outside scientists can check. Our page on the ranch’s modern investigations covers this period in more detail.

Theories and Explanations

Believers have put forward many explanations. Some think the ranch is a doorway to another dimension, which would explain why so many kinds of strange things are reported there. Others think there is an alien base below it, pointing to the lights and the cattle deaths. Some suggest secret military tests. Others think consciousness itself plays a role, which would explain why the events seem to avoid cameras.

Skeptics offer simpler accounts. The skeptic writer Robert Sheaffer has called the phenomena “almost certainly illusory” and suggested the Shermans made up their stories. In 1996 James Randi gave Bigelow a mocking Pigasus Award over the ranch. In 2023 Barry Greenwood criticised the $22 million program in the Journal of Scientific Exploration. Skeptics also note that the ranch’s fame has value. Each owner since 1996 has had reasons to keep the mystery alive, and the current owner runs a television series and holds the trademark.

Some features of the cattle deaths that sound strange, such as clean holes around the eyes and rectum and a lack of blood, have been put down to scavengers and natural decay when such deaths were studied elsewhere. The best known study is Kenneth Rommel’s 1980 report on cattle deaths in New Mexico, which reached that conclusion.

The Ranch Today

The ranch is private and closed to the public, and trespassers are turned away. Its owner continues to film there. After three decades the case still rests mainly on personal accounts, many of them from people who worked for the ranch’s owners. The 1996 newspaper story and the government records now being released are the firmest parts of the record.

The Department of War release: Bigelow’s field report

In October 2026 the Department of War released a primary-source account of the contractor’s field work at a Utah ranch. Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies’ April 2010 investigation report describes two months of interviews with residents, law enforcement officers, ranchers and members of nearby tribal communities, handheld sensor readings, planned plant-based biosensor experiments, and accounts of “dog-like bipedal creatures,” orbs of light and “little people.” The government’s summary does not name the property, so the link to this ranch rests on the program’s known history, and the report is the contractor’s record of what it was told, not a government finding. A November 2009 monthly report from the same release tracks the investigation at an earlier stage and mentions a separate database created for the ranch’s incidents.

Sources

• Zack Van Eyck, “Frequent Fliers?”, Deseret News, June 30, 1996
• Wikipedia, “Skinwalker Ranch” (ownership history, sale prices, skeptical responses)
• KSL.com, “Supernatural is normal at Utah’s infamous haunted Skinwalker Ranch”, October 8, 2020 (sponsored content)
• Bangor Daily News (Washington Post), “This millionaire has a promising idea for space exploration, but he says aliens are already here”, June 1, 2017
• Colm A. Kelleher and George Knapp, Hunt for the Skinwalker (Paraview Pocket Books, 2005)
• James T. Lacatski, Colm A. Kelleher and George Knapp, Skinwalkers at the Pentagon (RTMA, 2021)