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At the start, there was several items of evidence that, if collected, could been very useful in terms of proof. For example, the piece of flesh from the wolf, the burned-up dogs.

So fair enough, maybe the rancher didn't think to collect this evidence, which is understandable, but it's strange that no similar evidence manifested for the entire time the NIDS team was there.
 
Ah. The dogs.
I find it very worrying that HG Wells' heat ray is now fully operational...
 
Thanks for that, ruffready. I've bookmarked it for later.

I am in the mood for some extreme weirdness tales. :)
 
Has there been any updates on this story? Just found it from the "What really scared me paranormally" thread, and it seemed fascinating....
 
Mr. R.I.N.G. said:
Has there been any updates on this story? Just found it from the "What really scared me paranormally" thread, and it seemed fascinating....
What timing Mr. R.I.N.G. Last night when I came home my dad was watching "Skinwalkers" the movie. I didn't even know it was connected to the Skinwalkers being discussed on the "What scare me" thread because I didn't know any thing about it until I read the first page of this thread just now.:hmm:
 
The Skinwalker Ranch-NIDS

There is a very interesting site about this NIDS owned ranch in UTAH, its a fun read and I wish and hope its all true. Although other than the widely read article by George Knapp (who is implicated as working for the infamous Avairy) NID's have not been at all forthcoming, probaly because they can't get any evidence since the phenomena left along with the previous owners (ironic or just the nature of the beast-that is the question...) or the manifestations occour in an area not being studied(!!). Th whole story is fascinating on many levels-but the whole (super secret) Robert Bigelow Multi-billionaire thang is just great-And his side kick John Alexander has a miltary/secret service resume out of the X-files. No wonder they have been implicated as Avairy members....
Does anyone have the article that was on the UFO watchdog site that was very skeptical (reasonably so), it was titled something along the lines of the "The pastures are always more paranormal on the other side"

The Site is http://www.aliendave.com or something along those lines, its basically a site for the Utah Ufo Hunters. If my computer was up to it I'd be watching their Blair Witch type video's of various excursions into the top secret ranch. There is also a picture of a really odd looking "mammal" for cryptologists.....
 
You might want to use this forum's search engine - this subject has been discussed in a thread somewhere here IIRC. The mods may be able to merge things for you.
 
Skinwalker Ranch Thread

Is there a general thread for this here somewhere? There surely must.

So, suspending disbelief, what do you think it is? Interdeminsional portal? Navajo curse? It's probably the most interesting haunting(if that's even the word) I've heard of in a long time. Seems to cover it all.
 
Surely is, and I've just merged your post in with it :). Have also renamed the original thread so that the name's a bit more helpful..
 
stu neville said:
Surely is, and I've just merged your post in with it :). Have also renamed the original thread so that the name's a bit more helpful..

Oye! And it's a big one.

How do you search the forum complex? I knew this was here somewhere, just couldn't find it.
 
Just use the "search" tab at the top of every page, and in this case put "skinwalker" in as the keyword.

Unfortunately, quite a lot of threads are misleadingly titled (or give absolutely no clue as to the content), so we tend to rename them if we come across them - the original title of this thread was "Utah Ranch Investigation", for example.
 
Call me a cynic, but I found the site highly entertaining.

It really does go to show how expectations influence what we observe.

They have a terrific blurry 'unknown animal' pic with the suggestion that it might be a chupacabras (...more like a calf...) and an unearthly encounter with what sounds like a firefly.

Then there's the Bush-isms ("we continued to conversate") and the general approach ("the consensus seemed to be a strange and unsettling feeling...")

Love it. They'll be offering tours there one day.
 
stu neville said:
Just use the "search" tab at the top of every page, and in this case put "skinwalker" in as the keyword.

You'd think that! All searches turn up vacant, with a blank white page from my computer.


Guess I should have mentioned that.
 
Wembley said:
Call me a cynic, but I found the site highly entertaining.
It really does go to show how expectations influence what we observe.
They have a terrific blurry 'unknown animal' pic with the suggestion that it might be a chupacabras (...more like a calf...) and an unearthly encounter with what sounds like a firefly.
Then there's the Bush-isms ("we continued to conversate") and the general approach ("the consensus seemed to be a strange and unsettling feeling...")

I agree - and alot of the info on that site has no reference. Look at the stuff on 'The Aviary'. Absolutely no supporting evidence for any of the claims made there. Such hyper-secret groups (if they exist at all) seem to be curiously full of holes in theri security. The only 'odd' thing about the whole set-up is that the ranch is now owned by NIDS - but then again, info about this is far from clear. After a while, the whole thing starts to sound like a bad mix of Tom Clancy and Timothy Good ;)
 
"The only 'odd' thing about the whole set-up is that the ranch is now owned by NIDS"

I keep coming across Col. John Alexander, who in the real world is a genuinely alarming character in the world of nonlethal weapons - one of the biggest advocates of them in the US and played a big part in current research.

His book Future War (basically about nonlethals) is generally quite serious technical stuff, but with occasional jaw-dropping lurches into the paranormal. Is he just a man with strange hobbies (like Newton, a real enough scientist who spent a lot of time on biblical prophecies), or is he someone who Knows Something?
 
Actually, the more I look into NIDS, who runs it and it's outlook, it looks more and more like the pastime of a somewhat eccentric rich bloke. Not really anything suprising in that - or unusual.

As for Alexander - again, I think he's just mildly eccentric. Perhaps a bit gung-ho in an off-kilter way.
 
I was just organizing recent issues of FT when I stopped to take another look at the 'Skinwalker Ranch' piece. curiousity piqued, I went ahead and googled the 'official' ( ?) Ranch website. I have to say, the closer one looks at what they are offering as evidence, the less one is inclined to ascribe any more credence to the accounts than one would any other unsubstantiated paranormal claim. The bit with the black humanoid struggling to squeeze it's way through the 'portal' sounded like something straight from the X-Files ( Gillian Anderson - come back - we miss you ), and the blurry photos of calves notwithstanding, what I found vaguely humorous are the warnings liberally sprinkled throughout the site: Isn't this AMAZING? Isn't this INCREDIBLE? don't you want to see all this for yourself? However...YOU CAN"T!!! Horrific, malevolent, mysterious mammajammin' monsters are afoot! Heck, we think this darned place just might be the GATEWAY TO HELL! so, STAY AWAY!!! They should publish their findings. If not - put up or shut up.
 
I saw that UnCon 2004 was to have a speaker about Skinwalker Ranch... did anybody go, and what was the conclusion of the speaker?
 
I've read recently - probably on Rense - that Bigelow has withdrawn his funding from NIDS. Where that leaves Skinwalker, I don't know. I'll add the references later - unless I'm beaten to it. :)
 
Would'nt it be great if the whole Skinwalker Ranch thing was true !. Virtually every Fortean subject mixed together !.
 
Some info on Skinwalkers (and a bit of disgruntlement about the Tony Hillerman books) here:

http://www.hunterbear.org/navajo_witchcraft_and_the_skinwa.htm

In addition to the assurance of significant inaccuracy, I also have some other profound concerns. The film deals with Navajo witch-craft, a very real situation which is not the sort of thing the greatest majority of
Navajo and many other Indian people as well, believe should ever be
discussed publicly.

Navajo medicine men are religious leaders and healers [these dimensions as inextricably bound together in the Navajo view -- and that of other
Natives -- as a myriad of copper wires fused forever by super-intense fire.
Medicine men train rigorously for many, many years -- often as many as
seventeen -- before they're considered full-fledged practitioners in the
context of the very rich traditional Dine' culture and its myriad of
extraordinarily complex rituals that reach across the Four Directions to the
very corners of the Creation.

Navajo medicine men are extremely effective. Anyone who has lived for any period of time at all in and around the Navajo country is very well aware of this. United States Indian Health Service [PHS] now works closely, frequently side-by-side with the medicine men. The results are very good.

And then there is the other side: Witchery Way. Not a great deal is known, intricately, by most people about the very shadowy and dangerous world of Navajo witchcraft -- "bad medicine", so to speak.

But no one who has lived extensively in the Navajo country would ever make light of this sinister situation. It's taken very seriously. Witches practice their evil for purely mercenary purposes. Few Navajo would ever
have anything to do with them, even remotely -- but there are always a few who do.

Witches train extensively -- in their own very isolated and secure settings.
By Navajo traditional law, a known witch, one who has thus forfeited its
status as human, can be killed and this certainly applies to a kind of
witch much involved in these endeavours: the Skinwalkers. These are
obviously profoundly deviant Navajo who travel at night for nefarious
purposes and who are believed to have the ability to turn themselves into
various animals. They certainly are garbed in the skins of respective
animals.

These -- Witches and the closely related Skinwalkers -- are not the sorts of
things about which one should talk much at all. The Harvard anthropologist, Clyde Kluckhohn, did a book, Navaho Witchcraft
[Boston: Beacon Press, 1944.] An excellent person, he wisely recognized
his own limitations and those of his book.

I know a few things, at least. And here is a short, personal anecdote:

When we lived and worked at very remote Navajo Community College [now Dine' College], seven thousand feet above sea level and almost right under the much, much higher Lukachukai Mountains and just to the north of historic Canyon de Chelly, our little house was on the far outer edge of the small community of Tsaile [Say-Lee.] We were 95 miles from Gallup, New Mexico [where my youngest daughter was born in late '79] and 125 miles by road from Farmington. Our area was split by the Arizona / New Mexico border which means virtually nothing on the Navajo reservation. My Chev pickup had New Mexico plates and I had an Arizona driver's license from Chinle [Chin-Lee], the small Navajo town with a few BIA offices and a tribal police station 35 miles to the south. [Our good friend, Easy, now of Spokane, who posts regularly on our RedBadBear list, knows all about this setting. He was there at the college, then, a top-flight computer expert for NCC, and that's where we first met and became firm friends.]

Skinwalkers and witches in general are a concern in this setting -- as they
are everywhere in the Navajo country.

It was a July night, 1980, with the brightest high-altitude day-light Moon
one could ever imagine. I awoke suddenly at 2 a.m. in our rather isolated
house -- roughly the dimensional parameters of a traditional Navajo hogan,
but much larger -- and, through our bedroom window, I saw figures circling.

And I knew immediately.

Turning on the lights, I yelled and our house and its people and animals
came alive wildly. Our three dogs jumped from the couch, barking. One,
Ruggie, was a wonderful little terrier and the other her mother, Wendy. The third was the very formidable looking -- but eminently gentle -- Good:
half-coyote and half German shepherd. Clad only in my underclothes and with my always loaded Marlin .444 lever action, I went out the front door into the moonlight. There was movement -- revealing movement -- just inside the ring of cedar trees around one side of our little house. I held the rifle high, the dogs now barking very wildly.

Then the shadowy but revealing motion just inside the cedars was gone.

They were gone.

Hunter [Hunterbear]
 
Spookily enough, I just finished a Tony Hillerman ('Listening Woman') which featured skinwalker scares.

I'm not sure what the writer is objecting to here - surely the more that is known about them the better? And is he suggesting they are real?

I'm not sure that the ranch actually has anything to do with Navajo folklore, suspect someone just thought it was a cool name.
 
George Knapp, Investigative Reporter

Las Vegas Based Scientists Study 'Skinwalker Ranch'

Dec 22, 2005, 03:24 AM

A team of scientists based in Las Vegas has been conducting a study that may be different from anything that's ever been tried. The research is focused on a ranch in rural Utah where, for 50 years or more, paranormal activity has been reported, including UFOs, Bigfoot, mutilated animals and poltergeists. Some call the place Skinwalker Ranch, and George Knapp of the I-Team is the only journalist allowed to visit the property.

Oil executive Gregory Todd is one of the hundreds, if not thousands of northeastern Utah residents who've seen weird objects -- call them UFOs -- over their homes in the past 50 years. The Utah basin has also been a hotbed of other strange activity including Bigfoot encounters and mutilated animals.

In a basin known for an array of unexplained phenomena, the epicenter of high strangeness seems to be a picturesque spread known to many as Skinwalker Ranch. Native Americans who live near the property advise members to steer clear because, they say, this is the path of the skinwalker, an evil force.

The last family to live on this spread lasted only 20 months. From the first day back in 1994, they were terrorized by an unseen intelligence that played mind games with them, shadowy figures inside their house, objects that moved on their own, disembodied voices and bad things happening to their animals beginning with cattle and bulls that disappeared and others that were carved up with surgical precision in broad daylight. A gigantic wolf that attacked one of their calves was tracked through the mud, but the tracks simply stopped as if the animal had evaporated into thin air. Three dogs were vaporized after while chasing blue orbs of light in a pasture.

In 1995, the ranch came to the attention of NIDS, the National Institute for Discovery Science based in Las Vegas. NIDS bought the property and began an unprecedented scientific study. Observation posts were built. Video cameras were installed and operated. Scientific personnel and former lawmen were on the property 24-7 for 8 straight years. Dr. Colm Kelleher headed up the NIDS study.

Dr. Colm Kelleher said, "We probably have, if you count all the pre-NIDS and post-NIDS incidents, close to 100 different incidents. If you look at all of them, the one thing that jumps out is how unreproducible they are."

In other words, nothing ever happened the same. The scientists would spend all night out in the darkness and witnessed dozens of UFOs and odd balls of light. They also encountered large unknown animals, including ones that emerged from tunnels of light in the fields. Whatever it was proved elusive. The cameras that were installed atop telephone poles were attacked and dismantled, but whatever did it was invisible.

Dr. Colm Kelleher said, "We checked the time stamps on this pole versus this pole. We looked at when the camera lost power and nothing was on the tape. There should have been something visible because the range of these things is pretty good."

NIDS still owns the ranch, but it appears the phenomena have gone underground, as if weary of being hunted. As yet, the mystery of Skinwalker Ranch remains unsolved. Kelleher said, "If anything, it has created more questions that I had when I came into this thing."

The ranch remains off limits to outsiders. Visitors -- from this world anyway -- are not welcome.

---------------
George Knapp and Colm Kelleher have co-written a book about the ranch. It's called Hunt For The Skinwalker .

www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=4275629

The book is:

Hunt for the Skinwalker : Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah
by Colm A. Kelleher, George Knapp

www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/14165 ... ntmagaz-21
www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1416505 ... enantmc-20
 
I'm a third of the way through this book right now. I find the sightings of the silent aircraft and the weird "RV" experience of the woman especially disturbing and fascinating. These have a similar feel to the high strangeness occurences in Mothman Prophecies.

As for the quality of the book as a whole, I'll leave that for others to comment on.
 
Does anyone have any info about the beliefs of the native American Indians in the Utah area?
The Skinwalker ranch where all the UFO activity has taken place has been known about for decades from the Indians point of view.
The Indian's say the Skinwalker is evil.
Are there any myth's or legend's about the Skinwalker?
 
IIRC a skinwalker is a witch (male or female) with the specific ability to turn itself into, and take on the attributes of, various animals. Although the ability to transform into other creatures is a familiar to the Northern European tradition it appears to be a far more specific part of the Navajo skinwalker tradition. They are apparently still greatly feared in parts of the American Southwest.
 
A good article:

http://www.geocities.com/asdzani/navajo/skinwalk.html
Navajo Witches--Skinwalkers

Navajo witches differ greatly from the European variety and can't be recognized with the same methods. Unlike main stream European black-witchcraft there are no warning signs for the presence of a witch at work if they are in human form [i.e. blue flame, spoiled milk, etc., a la Warlock]. It would behoove you to know the behavior of a Navajo witch in order to spot and stay clear of this maleficent being.

All Navajo witchcraft categories, with one exception (see notes below bibliography), are associated with the dead and death. A couple of generations back this association was the easiest way to identify a witch. With the proliferation of weirdness in the Navajo youth population a witch can no longer be spotted by a person's romance with the ghastly things in life. If black clothing decorated with skulls were enough to designate witchcraft then a large chunk of the Navajo population, the writer of this paper included, would be labeled as a witch.

Apprenticeship

A person who has just become a witch's apprentice can be identified by new strange habits or a peculiar event. A common event is the murder of a close relative, usually a sibling, for his or her required initiation. Somebody with a relative buried with less than a whole body, with no plausible explanation, should cause a red flag to go up.

A common new habit for the novice is to take off in the middle of the night. It is believed that the local witches convene in an underground room littered with corpses. At these meetings they may make a sand-painting of the new victim with colored ash and mar it with human excretions. In this case getting drooled over is not a good thing. The members of this sect may also practice necrophilia with their latest female victim or prepare corpse powder with a male victim's flesh.

Shape Shifters

Skinwalkers are another type of witch closely associated with underground gatherings. They are "wer-animals" and own an animal skin that is used to transform them into these animals. Any real animal can see through the skinwalker's disguise but even a human can recognize the unnatural creature. For some unexplainable reason even a well seasoned skinwalker cannot obtain the perfect animal gait or leave the proportionally correct sized animal tracks.

Methods of Sickness

A strange habit that indicates witchcraft is the burying of stolen objects due the use of these personal items as props in spell castings. It might be hair, nail clippings, clothing, and favorite objects that are filched. These items are put into a bundle, sung over with a prayer that has been twisted into perversion and ending in the bundle's burial. Waking up with a bad hair cut or more chipped nails than before is a bad sign.

A witch who shoots "arrows" to cause harm are hard to spot. They might be recognized by the instruments used to infect victims with. Small objects such as pebbles, bone fragments, or shell shards along with the possession of a blow gun may be an indication of a witch.

Wild Kingdom

Some wild animals have the ability to use witchcraft. It is an inherent ability in the species and is not considered evil, even if it kills you. Even the ants are able to cause illness in humans so it's best to leave any wild animal alone, no matter how harmless they may appear to be.

The usual effect of any witching, left untreated, is a gradual loss of the ability to function in society, either physically or mentally [insanity]. In each case it is considered an "illness" to be treated by a prescribed ceremony that should restore the victim to full function.

And the Wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinwalker
Skin-walker is a witch or someone who practices a certain type of witchcraft, that turn them into a certain creature (mainly a canine of some type). Such witchcraft can be found in numerous cultures all over the world, closely related to beliefs in witchcraft, werewolves and other "were" creatures. The Mohawk Indian word "limikkin" is sometimes used to describe all skin-walkers.

Possibly the best documented skin-walker beliefs are those of the Navajo yenaldooshi, also sometimes referred to as a Navajo witch by outsiders. The yenaldooshi are evil human beings who have gained supernatural power by breaking a cultural taboo. Specifically, a person is said to gain the power of a yenaldooshi by murdering a close relative. The skin-walker will travel through the community by night, spreading misery and desecrating holy things. He or she is usually described as naked, except for a coyote skin. The yenaldooshi is also said to have the power to assume the form of a coyote or other animal.

The main power of the yenaldooshi comes from its use of corpse powder which is made from human cadavers. Touching the powder will curse a person with sickness or death. This is an inversion of the use of pollen among the Navajos, which is sprinkled to produce blessings. Another form of this is a bone pellet which the yenaldooshi will shoot into a victim's body.

In ancient Hopi culture there was a ritual ceremony once performed called the Ya Ya Ceremony. In this ceremony members would change themselves into various animals using the hide from the animal they chose, and the members use certain animal attributes like sight, strength,etc. The ceremony was banned after members developed a disease of the eyes.
 
OK, I picked up the book "Hunt for the Skinwalker"...
all I can say is WOW!

www.amazon.com/gp/product/1416505210/

Almost every Fortean topic is covered -- and I am only
5 chapters into it. So far: UFO's, Bigfoot, poltergeists, Masonic
conspiracy, witchcraft, even dog-headed men!
(The latter really intrigued me, even though the authors seem
to gloss over the story because they feel that sighting is
too wild for the general public to believe.)

I am also impressed that Native American beliefs and tales are given
very respectful coverage and integration into the overall story
of the ranch.

The authors do claim to wrap up with an explanation
that fits known scientific principles. I'll keep you posted! ;)

C'mon, Tangent7 -- what was your conclusion?

TVgeek

[Emp edit: Shortening link]
 
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