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With so much supposedly going on you'd think there would be plenty of scope. For example, they mention as part of their 'things going missing' series, a post hole driller, a heavy piece of kit apparently, which disappeared from an outhouse to be found several weeks later up a tree. If this happened to me, I think I'd take a few photos or video. Is there anything or is it all word of mouth?
from what i have read their is very little concrete evidence, the scientists tried and tried, they came to the conclusion they where being toyed with by a Superior intelligence , that knew what the scientists where up to and was always a step ahead, showing them just enough to keep interest but not enough for absolute proof. My own minor ghost hunting experiences has led me along the same path, but i would not expect anybody who has not been there, seen that to swallow it at all.

The scientists at the ranch called it precoqnitive sentient phenomena. I call it the trickster.
 
You have made many assumptions here.

I'm interested in paranormal topics and write about them. I don't have to "believe" in the reality of the paranormal conclusions to enjoy discussing and researching them and finding out what really is going on. To have such experiences is part of human culture and, therefore, it's worth studying (as folklorists, historians, and psychologists do). I don't like labels - they are limiting. I no longer label myself "a Skeptic" because, as you suggested, it puts me in a category I don't want to be in and some groups exclude those who don't toe their line of personal beliefs. But to be clear, I hold that various claims that seem paranormal likely have a normal explanation, or we just don't know what happened yet. I do rely on scientific knowledge, logic, and reason to assess claims. But if that is being a "skeptic" then lots of people here are that as well since we don't just swallow wild claims without question.

This is a refreshing view. I recently listened to a podcast with Ciaran O Keele a parapsychologist who describes himself as an "arch skeptic".
Rarely do you meet someone with such a closed mind. He immediately dismissed a witnesses ghost sighting account as , "post traumatic stress disorder" and "infrasound" which was frankly ludicrous.

He's obviously out to make fame and money by being the hardcore skeptic but has sacrificed all objectivity with horribly flimsy theories that must be true as they are "scientific" even if they actually don't fit the account.

Edit:

https://www.panoply.fm/podcasts/haunted/episodes/2Dq3hoDeIoYwCIeU6SswW2

https://www.panoply.fm/podcasts/haunted/episodes/1eWTrH0UooM48mESG6G0om
 
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I've worked with O'Keefe on a recent paper, but we've never met. I think he's cool. And I really loved that Haunted podcast series though, I admit, there are no clear answer to some of those experiences. IMO, it's not my place to make a judgment about them, I'm fine with letting them stand for whatever interpretation. There are things to consider, like bad memory recall and confabulation, (infrasound is not a good one since it doesn't affect many people apparently) but often you just don't have enough information. That's why I particular get annoyed when people write me and say "Explain THIS!"
 
I've worked with O'Keefe on a recent paper, but we've never met. I think he's cool. And I really loved that Haunted podcast series though, I admit, there are no clear answer to some of those experiences. IMO, it's not my place to make a judgment about them, I'm fine with letting them stand for whatever interpretation. There are things to consider, like bad memory recall and confabulation, (infrasound is not a good one since it doesn't affect many people apparently) but often you just don't have enough information. That's why I particular get annoyed when people write me and say "Explain THIS!"


That's great that you've worked with him, next time you do maybe ask him to apply a bit of objectivity to his opinion?

Infrasound is still in the "this needs a shitload more studies" realm if as I'm sure you have looked at the research there doesn't seem to be a certainty that infrasound causes people to experience paranormal events or what it causes.

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1029864917690931

Also don't get me started on those nurses on PTSD in the haunted podcast. He needs to go back to work rather providing soundbites on podcasts if he thanks that's an adequate conclusion to come up with.
 
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For those of you who don't know, JC Johnson was a fairly prominent and independent Fortean investigator. He was a former exorcist, and became known for investigating cryptozoology, especially the lore and sightings of the skinwalker on the Navajo Nation territory. He died earlier this year at 53.

I had a brief correspondence with him in 2016, where he shared with me this unlisted documentary of his footage and eye-witness accounts about skinwalkers on the Navajo territory. There isn't any actual footage of the creatures in here, but it investigates the folklore and the mindset of the modern Navajo people relating to the skinwalker lore. They are still prevalent, spotted often by those on the reservation and remain alive and well in the folklore. Skinwalkers have been tossed around on platforms like Coast to Coast AM as well. Especially when considering the terror in the faces of the eye-witnesses that recount their stories, i found this documentary to be very compelling.

people don't experience trauma for nothing, and these people are recounting very traumatic experiences.

Johnson posted it to YouTube but kept it unlisted because he said he didn't want this to go viral. He saw it as sensitive subject matter that should be treated delicately. He thought that people should be given the option of deciding whether or not they wanted to know about these things. I find that respectable of him.

But now that he has passed, RIP, I figured I'd post this doc to this forum in hopes that it may live on!


Also, here is some night vision footage he took of an alleged encounter with a skinwalker. pretty inconclusive, but interesting nonetheless.

Cheers
 
It's possible my father-in-law has just come up with an explanation for some of the phenomena at Skinwalker Ranch.

For some background my father-in-law is a retired High Voltage Electrical Engineer, he used to be chief Electrical Engineer at Carrington Powerstation near Manchester. More recently, although he's supposed to be retired (86yrs old) he's been consulting on various MOD projects and designed the electrical systems for a large container port and chemical manufacturer. I mention all this to show that he KNOWS electricity.

After watching a recent episode of The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch I called my father-in-law because something seemed off about an experiment the team performed. In the episode previous to the one I was watching, the team at the ranch had discovered that there were some areas of the ground that showed very high conductivity readings. Much higher than you would normally expect.

They decided to perform an experiment at one of the sites that was showing high conductivity in the magnetometer survey. The experiment consisted of two metal rods hammered into the ground 50ft apart (approximately the size of the anomaly). The top of one pole was connected to the positive of a 12V car battery, the negative of the battery was connected to the positive of a multimeter and the negative of the multimeter was connected to the other pole, with the ground completing the circuit to the first pole.

The way the team were talking, they weren't expecting to see anything on the multimeter. This is where I started getting suspicious, as the earth does conduct electricity. Then I realised that to us in the UK, having an 'Earth' wire is normal, where in the US it is not. Only Travis, the NASA Engineer, seemed to know what he was talking about. When they hooked up the battery and made the circuit LIVE, the multimeter started showing 0.3amps, much higher than what Travis expected to see. Travis was asked if the high conductivity could cause some of the electrical phenomena people have experienced. His answer was "possibly, but where is the battery"?

It was this experiment I told my father-in-law about, as I thought he must have something to explain this. And boy I was right. He spent the next hour and a bit explaining how electrical circuits work, and how very high-voltage circuits work from the Power Station to the Sub-Station to your house. He explained that every electrical circuit needs a return and that the return from the sub-station to the Power Station is the Earth. He explained that the experiment they did worked as it should and that the results they were seeing are what he would expect. When questioned about the battery, he asked where the ranch was located again, I explained that it was in northern Utah, he asked about the climate, hot and dry for most of the year. He asked about the geology, lots of conductive metals in the dirt. This is when it all started to slot into space.

My father-in-law explained. The hot dry climate causes lots of lightning storms, but before it gets to the point of actual lightning the ground and air will become highly charged with electricity; Here is your missing battery. In the areas of high conductivity such as the ranch this can be concentrated and can cause the plasma to ignite and/or glow; Much in the same way as lightning is the charged air coming up from the ground to the clouds, then igniting. I asked the following questions:

Could this cause glowing balls of light - Yes
Could this cause the mesa to glow - Yes
Could this cause lights high up in the sky that appear then disappear as quickly as they came - Yes
Could this cause nausea and headaches - Yes
Could this cause rapid changes in temperature in an area - Yes

He then asked me if I had ever heard of St Elmo's Fire; At first I said "yes it's a film from the 1980's", then admitted that I had heard the term, but didn't know what it was. He gave me an explanation which I then looked up Here.

So my father-in-law's explanation for the electrical phenomena at Skinwalker Ranch is intense St Elmo's Fire.

He then went on to tell me about how it was common for farmers in hot dry areas to get electrocuted from touching a cows horn. And that back in the day when farmers made haystacks, they would put a thinly thatched roof on it and push pitch-forks in to let the rain run off. Apparently these haystacks would build up a charge and electrocute the farmer when they touched the pitchfork.

Of course, none of this explains the other phenomena at the ranch such as the high Gamma radiations spikes, cattle mutilations, teleportation of cattle, poltergeist activity, and sightings of criptids.
 
It's possible my father-in-law has just come up with an explanation for some of the phenomena at Skinwalker Ranch.

For some background my father-in-law is a retired High Voltage Electrical Engineer, he used to be chief Electrical Engineer at Carrington Powerstation near Manchester. More recently, although he's supposed to be retired (86yrs old) he's been consulting on various MOD projects and designed the electrical systems for a large container port and chemical manufacturer. I mention all this to show that he KNOWS electricity.

After watching a recent episode of The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch I called my father-in-law because something seemed off about an experiment the team performed. In the episode previous to the one I was watching, the team at the ranch had discovered that there were some areas of the ground that showed very high conductivity readings. Much higher than you would normally expect.

They decided to perform an experiment at one of the sites that was showing high conductivity in the magnetometer survey. The experiment consisted of two metal rods hammered into the ground 50ft apart (approximately the size of the anomaly). The top of one pole was connected to the positive of a 12V car battery, the negative of the battery was connected to the positive of a multimeter and the negative of the multimeter was connected to the other pole, with the ground completing the circuit to the first pole.

The way the team were talking, they weren't expecting to see anything on the multimeter. This is where I started getting suspicious, as the earth does conduct electricity. Then I realised that to us in the UK, having an 'Earth' wire is normal, where in the US it is not. Only Travis, the NASA Engineer, seemed to know what he was talking about. When they hooked up the battery and made the circuit LIVE, the multimeter started showing 0.3amps, much higher than what Travis expected to see. Travis was asked if the high conductivity could cause some of the electrical phenomena people have experienced. His answer was "possibly, but where is the battery"?

It was this experiment I told my father-in-law about, as I thought he must have something to explain this. And boy I was right. He spent the next hour and a bit explaining how electrical circuits work, and how very high-voltage circuits work from the Power Station to the Sub-Station to your house. He explained that every electrical circuit needs a return and that the return from the sub-station to the Power Station is the Earth. He explained that the experiment they did worked as it should and that the results they were seeing are what he would expect. When questioned about the battery, he asked where the ranch was located again, I explained that it was in northern Utah, he asked about the climate, hot and dry for most of the year. He asked about the geology, lots of conductive metals in the dirt. This is when it all started to slot into space.

My father-in-law explained. The hot dry climate causes lots of lightning storms, but before it gets to the point of actual lightning the ground and air will become highly charged with electricity; Here is your missing battery. In the areas of high conductivity such as the ranch this can be concentrated and can cause the plasma to ignite and/or glow; Much in the same way as lightning is the charged air coming up from the ground to the clouds, then igniting. I asked the following questions:

Could this cause glowing balls of light - Yes
Could this cause the mesa to glow - Yes
Could this cause lights high up in the sky that appear then disappear as quickly as they came - Yes
Could this cause nausea and headaches - Yes
Could this cause rapid changes in temperature in an area - Yes

He then asked me if I had ever heard of St Elmo's Fire; At first I said "yes it's a film from the 1980's", then admitted that I had heard the term, but didn't know what it was. He gave me an explanation which I then looked up Here.

So my father-in-law's explanation for the electrical phenomena at Skinwalker Ranch is intense St Elmo's Fire.

He then went on to tell me about how it was common for farmers in hot dry areas to get electrocuted from touching a cows horn. And that back in the day when farmers made haystacks, they would put a thinly thatched roof on it and push pitch-forks in to let the rain run off. Apparently these haystacks would build up a charge and electrocute the farmer when they touched the pitchfork.

Of course, none of this explains the other phenomena at the ranch such as the high Gamma radiations spikes, cattle mutilations, teleportation of cattle, poltergeist activity, and sightings of criptids.
This is really interesting. I've been trying to collect information on other areas with earth light phenomena - Hessdalen, Pennines, and Yakima (Washington). There was a suggestion that there was high metal content in the rocks in Hessdalen valley creating a type of "battery". It's an intriguing concept but I'm not sure if it works in the real world. I'm HIGHLY skeptical of most of what sounds like imaginative fiction related to Skinwalker Ranch, but I think there are some undocumented electrical phenomena that may occur. Do you have any references for these concepts? I have a lot on earthquake lights which I think might also work in similar ways in very specific areas under certain conditions nearly impossible to reproduce in a lab.
 
This is really interesting. I've been trying to collect information on other areas with earth light phenomena - Hessdalen, Pennines, and Yakima (Washington). There was a suggestion that there was high metal content in the rocks in Hessdalen valley creating a type of "battery". It's an intriguing concept but I'm not sure if it works in the real world. I'm HIGHLY skeptical of most of what sounds like imaginative fiction related to Skinwalker Ranch, but I think there are some undocumented electrical phenomena that may occur. Do you have any references for these concepts? I have a lot on earthquake lights which I think might also work in similar ways in very specific areas under certain conditions nearly impossible to reproduce in a lab.
Hi

My father in law mentioned Earthquake Lights as well when he was giving his explanation.
 
The father-in-law mentioned that Edinburgh has the opposite problem in that the ground is not conductive due to being granite. They have great difficulty in establishing an Earth connection for their power supplies.
 
The father-in-law mentioned that Edinburgh has the opposite problem in that the ground is not conductive due to being granite. They have great difficulty in establishing an Earth connection for their power supplies.
That makes sense. Granite does not conduct electricity well unless it's very heavily fractured and water-saturated.

In the US, we call returns "grounding".
 
I've generally let the sensational stuff about Skinwalker Ranch roll by because the original sources hyped paranormal explanations. The media that was produced on the topic is not credible and I can't bring myself to sift through all the garbage. But the main claims were lights in the sky and dead cattle. I noticed from the original 1996 article that a "chemical smell" was present. Could it be ozone? Like after a lightning strike? Cattle can be killed by lightning without being struck directly. Many of the events the Shermans noticed took place during storms. Hmm.

It's very frustrating that these claims do deserve an objective scientific examination but I can't tell if they ever got that. I've never seen the NIDS work or any genuine scientific reports on the claims. Maybe there are some and I missed it. But it's hard to trawl through all the deliberate dramatic fiction about shapeshifters and portals. It seems very plausible that there are some natural events that occurred here that have been wildly misinterpreted. Reading recommendations appreciated.
 
The TV show The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch is an odd one for me. It feels like the guys on the team genuinely want to find out what’s going on. However, it feels like they are being forced to stick to a script and entertain the possibility of the ‘woo’. I guess that’s the price of getting the show on TV.

There’s been a marked difference in Travis from last year to this. Last year he was rolling his eyes a lot when the more fantastical elements were mentioned. I think he’s been told not to do that this year.

There was a point in last week’s where Eric, the lead investigator, was saying a piece to camera about some people thinking their was a flying saucer underground. You could clearly see that he thought it was nonsense.

My father-in-law has finally seen last weeks episode and once in context thought the experiments were sound if a little elaborate. There was no reason to use Tesla Coils to put thousands of volts into the ground other than it looked spectacular at night, and played well for a TV show. But at the same time he reiterated that all they were proving was that the weather and geology were causing the weird electrical phenomena and the glowing lights.

He did find it interesting that when they were digging with the big drill that all the compasses started pointing to it. He said that was indicative of highly magnetic metals in the earth where they were digging. He speculated that maybe a meteorite struck there thousands or millions of years ago depositing the elements that would naturally store energy, and is now buried under the ranch.

I’m really interested to see what happens in next weeks show as it looks like they have video of the glowing orb phenomena when they send up a weather balloon.
 
For what every reason I enjoy the show.

I like Travis Taylor’s Alabama accent.

I believe dimensional portals is the answer.
 
The TV show The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch is an odd one for me. It feels like the guys on the team genuinely want to find out what’s going on. However, it feels like they are being forced to stick to a script and entertain the possibility of the ‘woo’. I guess that’s the price of getting the show on TV.

There’s been a marked difference in Travis from last year to this. Last year he was rolling his eyes a lot when the more fantastical elements were mentioned. I think he’s been told not to do that this year.

There was a point in last week’s where Eric, the lead investigator, was saying a piece to camera about some people thinking their was a flying saucer underground. You could clearly see that he thought it was nonsense.

My father-in-law has finally seen last weeks episode and once in context thought the experiments were sound if a little elaborate. There was no reason to use Tesla Coils to put thousands of volts into the ground other than it looked spectacular at night, and played well for a TV show. But at the same time he reiterated that all they were proving was that the weather and geology were causing the weird electrical phenomena and the glowing lights.

He did find it interesting that when they were digging with the big drill that all the compasses started pointing to it. He said that was indicative of highly magnetic metals in the earth where they were digging. He speculated that maybe a meteorite struck there thousands or millions of years ago depositing the elements that would naturally store energy, and is now buried under the ranch.

I’m really interested to see what happens in next weeks show as it looks like they have video of the glowing orb phenomena when they send up a weather balloon.
I read an article where Travis proposes the crater idea because of the shape of the basin and the minerals. The meteorite stuff is total BS. The geological formation of the Uinta basin is well known and not mysterious. This is a well-explored and active gas/oil area. If there was a major gravity anomaly (meteorite) there, it would have been located long ago. In real science (as opposed to sham inquiry), you don't just shoot from the hip with ideas. You test them and get the ideas reviewed. This guy is only speculating and, when you do that on tv, it's promoting misinformation. That's why I can't watch the show. It's mostly garbage. Like I said before, it's frustrating. When a phenomenon that may be actually scientifically interesting gets the media treatment like this has, the facts get lost early.
 
I read an article where Travis proposes the crater idea because of the shape of the basin and the minerals. The meteorite stuff is total BS. The geological formation of the Uinta basin is well known and not mysterious. This is a well-explored and active gas/oil area. If there was a major gravity anomaly (meteorite) there, it would have been located long ago. In real science (as opposed to sham inquiry), you don't just shoot from the hip with ideas. You test them and get the ideas reviewed. This guy is only speculating and, when you do that on tv, it's promoting misinformation. That's why I can't watch the show. It's mostly garbage. Like I said before, it's frustrating. When a phenomenon that may be actually scientifically interesting gets the media treatment like this has, the facts get lost early.
I saw one episode where the security man couldn't believe the wild speculations they were making.
But then he said 'I don't have a PhD, so what do I know' - i.e. here was a practical man of common sense trying to understand how they could all jump to conclusions.
 
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According to Wikipedia, Travis holds multiple degrees and lots of military and civilian work.

I don’t think Travis would go along with the Skinwalker program if it was just a ridiculous fake.

His reputation is at stake.
 
According to Wikipedia, Travis holds multiple degrees and lots of military and civilian work.

I don’t think Travis would go along with the Skinwalker program if it was just a ridiculous fake.

His reputation is at stake.
His reputation is now as a guy doing a very silly TV show. I think you underestimate ego and hubris. We'd get lost in the mountain of examples that come to mind if we continued this line of thinking...

Edit: And don't even get me started on TV shows that are just ridiculous fakes. There is no incentive for these shows to be factual or accurate.
 
I saw one episode where the security man couldn't believe the wild speculations they were making.
But then he said 'I don't have a PhD, so what do I know' - i.e. here was a practical man of common sense trying to understand how they could all jump to conclusions.
That would be ‘Dragon’ the security guard who is afraid of his own shadow; Who’s loyalty to Brandon knows no bounds.

I really enjoy the show, and take the ‘woo’ factor for what it is. It’s entertaining even if it’s total BS. Prometheus are in this to make money, and if bigging up the ‘woo’ is what it takes, that’s what they are going to do.

I don’t think Travis, Eric or any of the others on the team are entertaining the ‘woo’ for any other reason than staying in script. They all come across as being quite practical people. Witness Brandon’s complete flip on digging this season. All last season it was ‘absolutely no digging’, this season it’s ‘fill your boots’. If anything was scripted that has to be.

Wheeling in the odd believer once in a while to talk about their alleged experiences keeps the entertainment value up. Is like on Oak Island when they wheel in the nutter with the madcap theory every now and again. I’m sure they do it just to get Marty rolling his eyes at the camera.

it’s interesting that the meteorite hypothesis has already been tested and proved inaccurate; I didn’t know that. So it would be really interesting to know what has caused the unusual minerals to be there. Whether it’s part of a natural geological process or not. The Mesa is obviously iron rich due to its colours.
 
His reputation is now as a guy doing a very silly TV show. I think you underestimate ego and hubris. We'd get lost in the mountain of examples that come to mind if we continued this line of thinking...

Edit: And don't even get me started on TV shows that are just ridiculous fakes. There is no incentive for these shows to be factual or accurate.
Don't know if this is correct or not 'Sharon,' but as the Skinwalker Ranch series doesn't seem to be showing on the Blaze Channel at the moment, I'm sure I heard word that it was shut-down by some sort of Federal department?
As I said - I only caught the backend of this on something I happened to hear, so I might have well heard it wrong, but it seems a big coincidence that it seems to have disappeared from our screens recently - without any apparent explanation to my knowledge?
 
Season 2 Episode 8 was on the History Channel last week.

The showings of Season 1 on Blaze in the UK have been intermittent though.
 
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I just looked up the History Channel listings for pacific time tonight.

I didn’t know they had a digging deeper show. Will have to look out for that.

3EB7CF61-9126-4DB3-B1AA-9EF90ECB313E.jpeg
 
Don't know if this is correct or not 'Sharon,' but as the Skinwalker Ranch series doesn't seem to be showing on the Blaze Channel at the moment, I'm sure I heard word that it was shut-down by some sort of Federal department?
Probably the black helicopter department.
 
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Don't know if this is correct or not 'Sharon,' but as the Skinwalker Ranch series doesn't seem to be showing on the Blaze Channel at the moment, I'm sure I heard word that it was shut-down by some sort of Federal department?
As I said - I only caught the backend of this on something I happened to hear, so I might have well heard it wrong, but it seems a big coincidence that it seems to have disappeared from our screens recently - without any apparent explanation to my knowledge?

But it hasn't disappeared. Series 2 isn't showing in the UK yet, only the US as far as I'm aware. When it does show in the UK, it'll probably be shown on History first then move over to Blaze after 6 months, maybe a year. Blaze was showing repeats of series 1 only the other day.
 
Well, in the U.S. we coming to the last episode in the second season on July 13th.

Netflix claims that they will decide on season 3 renewal soon, and also saying this program has been popular.
 
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