Skinwalkers, UFOs And Other High Strangeness In Utah

On Jan. 10, 2006, award-winning Las Vegas journalist/UFOlogist George Knapp and Dr. Colm Kelleher, formerly head scientific researcher for the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) were guests on George Noory?s ?Coast to Coast AM? radio show. The guests were interviewed about their new book, ?The Hunt for the Skinwalker,? chronicling the extremely bizarre happenings that have occurred for more than 50 years on a 400+ acre farm in Northeast Utah. Bigfoot, UFOs, invisible entities, giant wolves, animal mutilations ? this case has it all.

The spooky Utah ranch, situated between Vernal and Roosevelt, came to the attention of NIDS in 1996 when NIDS? founder, Robert Bigelow, purchased the ranch from the owners. Bigelow then sent Kelleher and a team of scientists out to the property armed with every kind of advanced technology that you can imagine to try and document the nearly 100 paranormal events at the ranch. George Knapp, too, went on site to investigate. But what they discovered there produced more questions than answers.

After purchasing the property in 1994, ?The Gormans? (not their real name) stayed there only twenty months. They complained of being driven nearly insane by the odd happenings. Inside their home, the owners were terrorized by disembodied voices, shadowy figures, and objects moving by an invisible force and then being hidden or otherwise displaced. Outside, things were even weirder.

The Gormans had owned four prize bulls that were kept in a pen that included a small utilities trailer. After numerous happenings, the owner remarked to his wife that he hoped nothing bad happened to his bulls because that would severely affect them financially. The owners then left for an errand. When they returned, the bulls were nowhere to be found.

The owners searched the area to no avail and then went to the trailer. The entrance was locked, so the owner looked in the window. Packed inside like sardines were the four bulls, appearing to be in some kind of placid trance.

Anyone who knows anything about bulls knows that they are powerful and willful. It?s extremely difficult to imagine one bull being put into such a small space, let alone four of them.

When the owner called to his wife that he had found the bulls, the animals seemed to awaken and then began doing what bulls do when they are penned up against their will ? they kicked the trailer apart trying to get out. Before selling the ranch to NIDS, the Gormans lost a total of 12 cattle that were mysteriously mutilated.

In another terrifying event, the owners saw a huge wolves that defied all logic. They were nearly as large as their Chevy Chevette. In one event, the witness watched in horror as one wolf attacked a calf in a corral. The owners fired a 357 Magnum point blank at the beast, but it seemed unharmed. When the owners followed the wolf tracks into the brush, the tracks disappeared as if in thin air.

In 1996, Mr. Gorman saw a strange, small blue orb floating over his property. He unleashed his guard dogs who chased the object into a dense thicket. He soon heard a yelping and later found three circles of a gelatinous substance. Gorman could explain it no other way than to conclude that his dogs had been vaporized, Kelleher reported.

Another time, a refrigerator-shaped UFO rose from the ground right in front of the witnesses and took off into the sky. There was also some kind of Bigfoot creature that roamed the area, leaving footprints.

The local native American tribes, the Utes, were reluctant to speak of the area, but Knapp was finally able to interview some of them. They told Knapp in no uncertain terms that the ranch was haunted by ?Skinwalkers? ? pure evil shapeshifters. The Utes advised Knapp to avoid the place altogether?.

I discovered a few interesting facts about the location of the ranch that may ultimately prove some kind of connection to the bizarre events. The farm is near the highest mountain range in Utah -- the Uintas -- the only mountain range in the contiguous U.S. that is east-west oriented. This area of Northeast Utah is also home to the world?s oldest dinosaur fossils. The ancient energy of this area could possibly lend itself to UFO-paranormal happenings ? and the entities that create them.

The Utah Skinwalker story also reminded me of the famous UFO-paranormal case of a Colorado rancher and family that had been reported by Timothy Good in his book, ?Alien Liason.? (Good?s book includes a strong commentary in support by none other than Great Britain?s Lord Hill-Norton, Chief of Defence Staff 1971-3, Lord of the Fleet who became a staunch ally of Ufologists following Britain?s Bentwaters-Rendlesham Forest UFO case.) Colorado borders Utah, both states are part of the Four Corners region, and many of the same phenomena are present in both cases.

In his interview, George Knapp suggested that the Northeast area of Utah is home to some kind of inter-dimensional portal that allows unearthly creatures to pass from their reality into ours.

Ufology has a long history with paranormal events. Though the final answers still elude us, what we can say is that there appears to be a connection between these phenomenological events and the more that we investigate them, the clearer that connection seems to be.

Ann Barnett
annbarnet@myway.com