Brendan Jesus
By the end of Season 5 Episode 2 “Holy Cow” of The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, ranch owner Brandon Fugal will boldly exclaim, “We are on the cusp of discovering the secret of Skinwalker Ranch.” How did we get here? Before we cover the experiment, yes singular, in “Holy Cow” I think it’s pertinent to address one thing I discussed in my coverage from last week and wrap that into something I’ve been noticing within the Skinwalker Ranch fandom.
Before going into this, I want to make one thing clear. I still love The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch. It does not cease to be entertaining, and thought-provoking, and is an excellent catalyst for disclosure. But something feels off in Season 5. Are their hearts just not into it as much? Are they being throttled by the network? Hell, are they being throttled by the government? Season 5 just feels incredibly slow. In the previous Season, we had industrial drills malfunctioning, rocket explosions, and hundreds of lit-up drones flying in the night sky. Hell, we even had government surveillance helicopters in one of the fields!
From the Skinwalker Ranch Reddit, conversations with friends, and general perception, audiences feel that Season 5 is either holding back or just plain boring. While I don’t agree that Season 5 is boring, I do understand why they feel that way. Part of me believes this could be a residual fallout of Dr. Travis Taylor and his work as Chief Scientist for UAPTF. In fact, as I write this, there is a poll on Reddit asking that exact question, Dr. Travis Taylor: Friend or Disinformation Agent?
While I, and seemingly the poll creator, do believe Travis is fully invested and on board with Brandon and his team of intrepid researchers, could the History Channel (and Brandon, by proxy) be trying to keep disclosure on the down-low? Have audiences lost faith in Travis, and if so, could that result in losing faith in Brandon? Brandon has made it inherently clear that he thinks Travis is fully on board and has the ranch’s interests in mind. But at the end of the day, as long as Brandon wants to keep the show alive, it doesn’t matter what Brandon thinks–it’s the audience who matters. If audiences think Brandon is withholding information because of Travis’ involvement, then that makes him no better than the government spooks doing the same thing.
Again, I want to state I believe Travis is here because he wants to be, and is not moonlighting for a government organization. And I appreciate how Brandon and the team have stood firmly by him. I just think it’s important to raise these questions when looking at how this season is perceived as tame (by some of the audience).
Enough of that! Let’s talk about Season 5 Episode 2 “Holy Cow.”
The Setup
Firstly, whoever names these episodes made a huge mistake by not calling it “Portals, Portals, Everywhere” but that’s neither here nor there. We join Dr. Travis Taylor, Tom Winterton, Dragon, Erik Bard, Kaleb Bench, Jim Royston (OmniTeq), and Sam Deriso (OmniTeq) in the Command Center. They are sitting around the table rewatching the third piece of evidence from “What’s Up.” In the previous episode, there were talks about how the white orb in that third video resembled the orb that entered the Mesa from one side and seemingly came out on the other side. Now, they get to look at the videos directly side-by-side.
After watching the evidence, Tom mentions where the orb exits the Mesa also happens to be where the petroglyphs are. If you’re unfamiliar with the show, there are petroglyphs on the Mesa which resemble Native American notations of portals. Once this evidence comes to light, Dr. Travis Taylor decides on their next experiment. Travis and Kalen will go to the East Field, where the orb entered the Mesa, while Tom, Erik, Jim, and Dragon will go to the north side of The Triangle. When the teams are in place, Travis will use his RF Signal Generator to transmit a 1.6 GHz signal through the Mesa to see if Erik can capture it from where the orb came out of the Mesa.
It should be stated that it’s made clear that Travis’ RF Signal Generator should in no way, shape, or form be able to transmit that long of a distance through/around the Mesa.
“Holy Cow”
Before we get into the experiment, we do sidetrack slightly to some of the strange animal deaths on the ranch. The team brings Ben Woodruff, a biologist from the Hutchings Museum, to look at some of the animal carcasses. Ben meets with Erik, Kandus Linde, and Tom Lewis. Before getting to the cows, Ben takes a look at two anomalous bird carcasses; one a Starling, the other a Grosbeak. The Starling was found a week and a half ago, while the Grosbeak was found two and a half weeks ago. Oddly enough, both birds look recently deceased. Something ain’t right here.
Ben immediately states how both birds should be further along in their decomposition. At this point in their death, both birds still have their insides, which are the first things to usually decompose. So the fact that both birds are still squishy, have their feathers, and haven’t even gone through any stage of rigor mortis is concerning and anomalous. Moreover, no maggots or beetles have been discovered around the birds, either. Ben points out that the main oddity of the Starling is how its brain is completely gone. He also questions why none of the scavengers on the property have even taken a bite of these two birds.
From here, the four go to the site of a cow that died over six months ago. When they get to the bones, Ben immediately takes notes of a few things. Firstly, there is still wet tissue on some of the cow’s bones. Secondly, the spine and vertebrae are still intact (that piece of evidence doesn’t mean much to me, but it was met with a spooky sound when it was revealed). And thirdly, there’s a noticeable hole in one of the cow’s ribs. Interestingly enough, the hole splinters out on one of the sides.
Ben says he isn’t sure as to what could cause this hole, but I have a few guesses. The first thing that comes to mind is one of the most intriguing stories from Skinwalker Ranch. Now, forgive me for forgetting names, but one of the earliest stories of Skinwalker Ranch is about how a father caught a giant dog frightening his animals (or his son, I don’t remember all the details). The father shot this giant dog a few times, but the dog did not react. Some have described this creature as a skinwalker, and some have said it’s a large mutated dog. Who knows. Could this large creature be the one of skinwalker lore? A personal thought I had was that it looked like a hollow point bullet hole. They have no cause of death for this cow, so could it have been shot and no one realized?
The In and Out Experiment
Dr. Travis Taylor and Kaleb Bench head out to the East Field to get their equipment set up, while Erik Bard, Tom Winterton, Dragon, and Jim Royston head over to the north side of The Triangle and do the same. Jim prepares his LIDAR drone, which he hopes to fly between the in and out zones of the Mesa in the hopes of catching…something.
Once Travis gets the Spectrum Analyzer set up, he notices something. Nearly immediately, two signals appear on the left and right side of the 1.6 Ghz frequency. This almost mirrors something that happened in 2022 with Travis and Erik over at Homestead 2. It’s posited that these two mirroring signals could be communicating something between each other. They radio over to Dragon to see if Erik is also seeing these signals. Alas, Erik does not catch these on his RF Signal Receiver.
Jim gets his LIDAR drone in the sky and directly over the ‘out’ zone of the experiment, and almost simultaneously, Travis loses the two mirroring signals! Like clockwork, Jim’s drone goes RTK red and loses communication with its base. Going hand in hand with the loss of communication, Jim’s drone disappears from Erik’s GPS tracking. The cherry on top of the sundae is when Jim’s drone completely disconnects and starts automatically returning to base. We’ve seen time and time again that the Mesa loves to ruin drones, and this is no exception!
As the drone comes back past the ‘out’ zone, Travis gets the 1.6 Ghz signal back, and the drone reconnects with its base! We know WHY this is happening, but not HOW. In a previous episode, the team found a spire on top of the Mesa, over the route between the in and out zones, through the use of photogrammetry. This spire was constructed visually through hundreds of photos taken and is one of the most questionable finds in Skinwalker Ranch history. There is no explainable answer to what this spire is, and it is one of my favorite pieces of evidence. So, we know WHY the drone did what it did, but we still don’t know how the spire affects electronics.
Travis starts his signal back up when Erik notices a spike in his signal receiver. There is no way the signal should be reaching Erik. In the hopes of replicating this evidence, Travis shuts the signal off and starts it back up. Erik, again, gets peaks of the signal. This should not be happening! While this is happening, Jim starts to fly his drone again, this time he flies it straight into the air. Oddly enough, the GPS shows the drone flying south. To boot, there are large gaps in the GPS data. Looks like the Mesa is having its fun again. The drone starts to malfunction, circling north to south many times. That’s when Jim gets an RTK red warning, and the drone loses its signal.
The Findings
We join Dr. Travis Taylor, Erik Bard, Dragon, and Kaleb Bench in the Command Center the next day. So what did we find? Erik has four videos from the high-speed camera Travis and Kaleb set up at their research site. In the hopes of highlighting anything anomalous in the bright sky, Erik does a contrast enhancement for the videos. I will say, this makes me miss when they did experiments at night, and I wish this one was done at night.
The first video is of an orb flying in the sky. It’s confirmed this UAP is not a drone, but interestingly enough it does correlate with the gaps in the missing GPS date. It’s a good piece of evidence, but things are going to get crazier from here. The second video shows another UAP flying right into the portal petroglyph near the ‘out’ zone. This is now the second time we’ve seen concrete proof of something entering the rocky Mesa.
Erik’s third video is scarily compelling. It shows four different UAPs moving in four different directions. None of them are planes, they are moving too fast. Nor are they birds, as wings are not present in any of the four UAPs. What’s even more interesting is how each UAP adjusts its speed multiple times. The fourth and final video is a hell of a cliffhanger. Erik shows another UAP in the sky, flying in an ‘S’ pattern over the triangle.
From here, the episode ends with a patented Brandon Fugal talking head, with his Lament Configuration sitting on his desk behind him. As I stated at the beginning, Brandon proclaims, “We are on the cusp of discovering the secret of Skinwalker Ranch.”
So, “What’s Up”?
I can understand how these first two episodes could seem fairly anticlimactic. Going from rocket explosions and hundreds of drones to broadcasting a signal through the Mesa and making TWO episodes about it does seem kind of lame. But, the implications of a portal within the Mesa and how the photogrammetry spire comes back into play are highly intriguing. How could this signal make it this distance THROUGH solid rock? It just shouldn’t work. And what exactly are these UAPs that are seemingly stimulated by their Mesa experiments? Hopefully, Brandon’s words ring true, and we get some solid answers this season.
My hopes going forward are for them to get back into the Mesa with some drills, firing off more rockets into The Blob, and more nighttime drone work. Who knows what direction this season will take, but I’m fully invested…and I hope you are too.
