Brendan Jesus
Just a couple quick updates before we dive on in to Season 5 Episode 8 “Graves Concern” of The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch. I love and appreciate all of the support I’m receiving from the Skinwalker Ranch groups on Facebook for my coverage of this series! I decided to share last week’s coverage with a couple of other groups as well, so if this is your first time here from one of those new groups, welcome! To those who have sent words of encouragement from my UAP experience in last week’s coverage, thank you! It feels nice to be able to tell a story like that and receive kind words in return.
Now this is where I might lose some of you. Over the weekend I invited Jeremy McGowan onto my podcast, and we talked for two whole hours. We covered his time on the military, the creation of O.S.I.R.I.S., and even talked about quite a lot of the information discussed in the opening paragraphs of my “Bad Taste” coverage. He also went into a lot more detail on some of the questions I had asked him, via email, during my coverage of “The Flash.” While there may be a couple of things we don’t fully agree on, Jeremy McGowan seems to be one of the few people in the UFO/UAP community whose main goal is disclosure. Ufology is rife with grifters and scammers, so being able to do my first ever interview, in the field of ufology, with Jeremy was quite an eye-opener. I’ll share more details on my interview with Jeremy McGowan when it gets closer to the release.
Without any more fanfare, let’s jump in our spacecraft and dive right into…The Secret(s) of Skinwalker Ranch.
Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire
We join Dr. Travis Taylor, Erik Bard, and Dragon as they’re flown by Cameron Fugal 10 miles northwest of Skinwalker Ranch to the Roosevelt Municipal Airport. It was great being able to see Cameron again! I missed him. At the airport, the team meets pilots Kenda Heart (who I believe was on a previous episode in Season 2 or Season 3) and Sam Davis. They fill Kenda and Sam in on why they will be experimenting with them.
In Season 5 Episode 7 “The Cone Zone” it was revealed, through technologist Pete Kelsey’s terrestrial LIDAR scanner, that there is a 2,000-foot high cone-shaped anomaly above the ranch. This anomaly also stretches all the way from Homestead 2 to the East Field.
Erik informs Kenda and Sam that they would like them to fly a plane, a Pitts 2B airplane, 5,000 feet above the Triangle, where the cone apexes, and then spiral down with smoke. The hope is to have the smoke make contact with the anomaly and potentially reveal something. As they prepare to take off, Dragon reminds Kenda and Sam that health and safety are key so they can pull out of the experiment if they feel unsafe in any regard.
Later that day we join the team over near the Triangle. Cameron, with Thomas Winterton, has his helicopter hovering to the south of the Triangle at 2,000 feet. There are high-speed cameras set up and multiple antennas ready to intercept any possible strange signals. Jim Royston and Sam Deriso, of OmniTeq, are here as well. As the experiment is set to begin, Erik says he’s all set from the Skinwalker Ranch Command Center. Right as Kenda and Sam near the ranch with their plane, Travis reports the usual 1.6 GHz signal on a skyward-facing antenna.
Now above the ranch, Kenda and Sam begin to release the smoke… only there’s something wrong. The smoke barely comes out of the plane. Little wisps of smoke puff inconsistently. Thomas Winterton says this could possibly be the ranch interfering with them. Suddenly, Sam says the alternator isn’t working right and that it keeps clicking off. Travis gets the 1.6 GHz signal back right when this issue arises.
That’s when the oil temperature on the plane starts to become unstable. Understandably, the rest of the experiment is called off. We all meet up back at the Roosevelt Municipal Airport. Sam reveals the 25 to 30 degree change in the oil gauge but said it went back to normal the second they were away from the ranch. Hopefully, we can get this experiment again because the findings could be fascinating and groundbreaking if it worked properly.
Later that night we join Travis, Erik, Kaleb, Dragon, and Thomas at the Skinwalker Ranch Command Center. Erik pulls up video from a ground-level sky-facing camera that shoots at 240 frames per second. Floating next to Cameron’s helicopter is a black dot. It moves up and down and incredibly fast speeds. Travis confirms it’s definitely not something on the lens. The black dot moves up and stops next to the helicopter before disappearing. Could it have been monitoring the sky experiments at the ranch?
Loc, Stock and Four Smoking Rockets
Two days later we join the team from Mark Construction Inc. at the Mesa drill site. Alex Swanson tells them that the broken drill head has been retrieved and they are good to start drilling again.
Later that day some guests arrive at the Skinwalker Ranch Command Center. Dr. Travis Taylor, Erik Bard, Kaleb Bench, Dragon, and Thomas Winterton meet up with Jay Straton (former Director of the UAP Task Force) and Ryan Graves. Jay Stratton oversaw experiments on the Ranch during the Bigelow era. Ryan Graves is a Navy veteran who flew F-18s for 11 years. Why that name might sound familiar to a lot of people in the UFO/UAP community is because Ryan Graves was one of the individuals who testified in the highly discussed whistleblower testimony at the United States Committee on Oversight and Accountability. With Graves during that nearly three-hour-long event were former UAPTF member David Grusch and retired Commander David Fravor. While little has come from this testimony, the most interesting takeaway was when Grusch revealed the existence of non-human biologics taken from UFO crash sites.
Ryan Graves now works in the private sector with the Americans for Safe Aerospace (ASA), with the hopes that pilots and individuals in the military can have a safe space to reveal their experiences.
Erik shows Ryan and Jay the video of the black dot that appeared near Cameron’s helicopter and he seems intrigued. Ryan says something that seems to strike the right chord with Erik: that it seems like this object is navigating of its own accord. He also points out how the object has no wings, no exhaust, and there are no signs of propulsion. Erik also pulls up a video from the night in 2022 when a spherical white UAP appeared in the sky the night of the drone swarm. They also pull up the enhanced image of the orb where it revealed that the spherical object is split down the middle with a black dot in the middle. Ryan tells them that over 50% of UAPs are spherical.
Later that night we join quite a few people at the Triangle and the East Field. At the Triangle, we have Travis, Kaleb Bench, Ryan Graves, Jay Stratton, and Pete Kelsey. Over at the East Field, we have Thomas Winterton, Dragon, and the boys from Loc Precision with Allen Isdell and Dave Barber. The guys from Loc have designed two multi-rocket launching systems; each one will do two rounds of four simultaneous rocket launches, for a total of 16 rockets. One set will be at the Triangle and the other set of rockets will be at the East Field.
While the rockets are launched, Kaleb will be running the SLAM scanner. Pete Kelsey will be flying his thermal drone. Thomas Winterton will be running the terrestrial LIDAR scanner. Ryan Graves will be monitoring Pete’s thermal drone footage, as he has a lot of experience with thermal videos. Throughout this whole experiment, Erik will be monitoring everything from the Skinwalker Ranch Command Center.
9:56 PM
The first set of rockets go off, seeming without a hitch. Suddenly, the rockets, that are flying in incredibly close proximity to one another, start to drift significantly in different directions. THEN Erik radios in to say the Kracken is tracking a 1.6 GHz signal over from the southern fence line. This is a new location for the signal to be popping up from, so it’ll be interesting to see if this comes back up again. Travis turns one of his antennas to the south and immediately picks up the 1.6 GHz signal.
It’s time for the second set of rockets. They fire off, seemingly without a hitch. That’s when Ryan tells everyone he sees an orb in Pete Kelsey’s thermal video. And it’s MOVING. Erik is unable to find any planes or helicopters on his ADS-B (which tracks conventional aircraft).
Then, the episode just kind of ends.
Final Thoughts
The ending of this episode was incredibly abrupt. With the Pitts 2B malfunction, the two seconds we spent at the drill site, and the five minutes we spent rehashing things we’ve seen a thousand times (granted it was for Jay and Ryan) just made this episode feel bland. Yes, we get two orbs, but there’s little action and this episode is paced horribly.
Also, after speaking with Jeremy McGowan, and doing some research of my own, I’ll be discussing the 1.6 GHz signal a bit more in-depth soon, and how it might just be something used to force “excitement.”
