Brendan Jesus
Welcome back, fellow ranchers! Firstly, thanks for the incredibly warm response to last week’s coverage! Many of you, including me, were [im]patiently waiting for Dr. Travis Taylor and his team of intrepid researchers to make it back to Skinwalker Ranch and get back to firing rockets and setting off drones. There were a handful of people who reached out to me, threateningly. I’ve been called a government opp, a “spook” (I don’t like that word, but I’m directly quoting), and I’ve been told that I’m getting paid by the History Channel to promote the show. PLEASE, History Channel, if you’re listening, I will write even nicer things about your show if you grease my pockets.
I don’t have any fun Ufology news for you all this week. Or maybe that’s what my government handlers are telling me to say. But fret not, I want to fill you in on what I’ve been reading the past week. The fandom of The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch is vast. I know for a fact that there is a crossover between fans of this show, Art Bell, Bill Cooper, and the far right. I bought myself some books for my birthday, and they are The Coming Global Superstorm by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber, Communion by Whitley Strieber, and Behold a Pale Horse by Bill Cooper.
I’m enjoying what I’m reading so far. Communion has been on my to-be-read list for some time, and I’m looking forward to digging into one of Ufology’s most well-known stories. On top of that, I’ve heard Art talk about his and Whitley’s book for some time, and it will be interesting to see how their book from the ’90s measures up to what we’ve seen with today’s climate.
Behold a Pale Horse is wacky. It’s a cry for help from a very sick individual. The far right Bill Cooper knew is not the far right of today. Those who push FEMA death camp and “peacefully protest or don’t protest at all” tweets from behind accounts with that Trump profile pictures are jokes. The party that you know so well, and would ruin the lives of others over, wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire. The party of “take action including violence in forms of attack and counterattack” (Cooper, 50) is nothing more than a laughing stock of the world.
I say this because I know there is a heavy crossover of fans of this show and influential right-leaning voices like Art Bell and (heavily right-leaning) Bill Cooper. Just know, the person who made YOUR party what it is would be reviled with how the far right is nothing more than bootlickers. You’re advocating for a tyrannical dementia-ridden creep who is the direct opposition of your “don’t tread on me” flags. If you stand with ICE and the National Guard over those who are standing up for the populace, you’re on the wrong side of history.
Anyways, it’s time for us to head out to Utah to see what our favorite team of researchers is up to. It’s time to see if we get any closer to finding The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch.
How’s The Hole?
Dr. Travis Taylor, Erik Bard, Kaleb Bench, and Thomas Winteron are at the Mesa Drill Site. They meet up with Josh Halpin, an Inspection Specialist with STRAHL LLC, and his team. Josh plans to feed a 394-foot camera up Borehole 1 to see if it is still intact after it went untouched over the winter. As long as Borehole 1 is still intact, they can go forward with the plan to widen the hole.
Josh starts to feed the camera up the hole, and it’s smooth sailing to start. At one point, someone notices something odd. There’s a green, gelatinous object inside the hole. It looks very similar to some green goo they found in the spoil pit back in Season 4 (or was it Season 5?). They had the green goo tested in that seaso,n and it was revealed that the goo consisted of burnt plant materials and was full of charcoal.
They continue checking the hole. That’s when the camera briefly stops and then goes completely dark. This happens at around the 200-foot mark. Does that number ring a bell? You may remember this exact location from Season 5, where the beacon on Mark Construction’s drillhead continued to lose signal. The camera comes back on after it’s fed deeper into the hole. Thankfully, there has been no collapse.
One day later, Travis, Erik, and Kaleb meet up with Thomas at the Mesa Drill Site. Thomas is with a team that has a strong suction tube. The goal is to get the tube near where the green, gelatinous object was filmed. After the suction tube is pulled out, they check the spoils. While the material could not be recovered, Travis notices some black shale (or flint), and we’re again informed that a material like this should not be retrieved from within a sandstone mesa.
The Sky’s The Limit
Later that day, Sky Elements’s Preston Ward and team come back to the ranch! They join up with Travis, Erik, Kaleb, Jim Royston, Sam Deriso, and Pete Kelsey. Preston tells the team that they’re equipped with 100 pyrotechnic drones, which will be the most pyrotechnics ever to be set off on the ranch. Travis thinks all of this smoke will be useful to tell if The Bubble is real, and that maybe they will learn the true dimension of The Bubble.
Preston plans to fly the pyro drones in a cone formation over The Triangle. Once there, the pyro will be set off. This will send sparks about 30 feet below, and fill the air with smoke. Once that is complete, the pyro drones will be shut off, and 200 regular drones will be flown. These drones will also be placed over The Triangle. Once in place, Travis will fire a rocket up through it. Jim Royston will be flying his drone throughout this. Pete Kelsey will be taking constant terrestrial LIDAR scans.
And I’d be remiss not to shout out Joey Rodriguez and Richard Kahra from the Avalon Fire Department. Have you ever noticed how there are no songs titled, “F*ck The Fire Department”?
As Preston and his team set up the pyro drones, Travis starts to see the pesky 1.2 GHz signal on the spectrum analyzer. Preston turns on the drones, which is when Travis ALSO sees the 1.6 GHz signal. (Travis says the military uses this signal for tracking communications between satellites and the ground.)
Signals be damned, Preston gets the pyro drones airborne. The drones look like they’re positioned over The Triangle from both his perspective and the computer’s GPS monitoring. Thinking things are hunky dory, Thomas gets the goahead from Preston and fires off the pyro. Unfortunately for Thomas, he couldn’t hear Travis screaming that the drones are not over The Triangle. Even though the GPS shows correct positioning, Travis later tells Thomas that the drones were about 30 to 40 meters away from The Triangle. They were actually over the road that leads to the South Field.
Besides the location issue, the pyro goes off without a hitch. And it looks dope.
It should be noted that Erik Bard is monitoring everything from the Skinwalker Ranch Command Center. But this is odd. They spent a weird amount of screen time in Season 6 Episode 1, “Bubble Trouble,” talking about Jim Royston’s ARC. Why would Erik be at the Command Center and not the ARC?
Once the pyro drones are finally on the ground, Sky Elements sets up the 200 regular drones for flight. The drones take flight and head toward The Triangle. Sky Element’s drone tracker shows them directly over The Triangle…but the drones themselves are everywhere. Instead of taking the time to figure out a workaround, Travis still decides to fire the rocket off near the cone-shaped drone structure.
Team members wonder a few different things out loud. Could there be something at the center of The Bubble that interferes with drones? We’ve seen GPSs malfunction around this area before. Later in the episode, someone mentions that their working theory is how The Bubble shifts and moves around. This also brings up another question: could the newly-discovered 1.2 GHz signal cause enough interference to throw the drones off course?
Spreading The Hole Open
Mark Construction comes back to the ranch while the team waits for the previous night’s data to be compiled. Travis goes over what needs to happen before they move on to Borehole 2. To widen the borehole, the drill will be fed up the hole until it peeks out of the top. From there, a reamer bit will be attached and pulled through backwards to widen the hole. And once that is all taken care of, a gel-based concrete will be pumped through to line the walls of the hole. Oh, and a beacon will be placed on the drillhead and will emit a 34 MHz signal.
Alex Swanson had calibrated the beacon and placed it in the drillhead. It has a full battery and should be good to go. But, weirdly, the battery is now dead and the beacon is locked. Alex tells us the beacon can only be locked manually, and no one has touched the beacon since he did. Kaleb points out how they’re currently at the edge of The Bubble. Alex ends up installing a new beacon in the drill head and manually unlocks it. Suddenly, the drill beacon isn’t calibrating. That’s when Travis notices the 1.6 GHz signal.
The 1.6 GHz signal is coming from directly inside the Mesa. If the 1.6 GHz signal wasn’t weird enough, to them, the 1.2 GHz signal reappears. Sam Deriso uses a directional-based antenna to find where the 1.2 GHz signal is originating…It’s coming from The Triangle!
Alex’s beacon still refuses to calibrate. Travis thinks that if they take the beacon outside of The Bubble, then it will calibrate. Thomas takes a few members from Mark Construction out to Homestead 3. The beacon connects and calibrates immediately. Interestingly, on the drive back, the second they cross into The Bubble, the beacon’s signal becomes weak and starts ping-ponging around.
The team from Mark Construction says they will call it a day. Come tomorrow, the beacon will be properly calibrated, and they promise to get things up and running. This may not be the best news for now, but Erik thinks this is still valuable data.
Data Review
Travis, Erik, Kaleb, Jim, Sam, and Thomas are at the Skinwalker Ranch Command Center. They’re joined virtually by Pete Kelsey as well as Sky Elements’s Preston Ward and Brian Woodward.
They start by looking over Pete’s data. His terrestrial laser scan reveals the peak of the dome at 2000 feet. It’s this gorgeous, rounded feature at the very top of The Triangle. Say what you will, but this data speaks volumes. Travis wonders if The Bubble only “turns on” when the 1.2 and/or 1.6 GHz signal appears.
Erik pulls up his high-speed footage of Preston’s pyro drones. He plays a video of a black object cascading down the side of the pyro drones. Preston states that it’s definitely not any part of the pyro drone. Travis says it’s a UAP.
Jim Royston plays a video from Travis’s rocket launch. There’s a UAP to the right of the rocket that, and I say this as earnestly as possible, jumps half the sky in a single frame. At the distance it appears from Jim’s camera, that’s an insane amount of distance. Kaleb points out a second object. We see this bright blue light go from the top right of the screen and fall straight down. Halfway through the blue light’s descent, it vanishes. Only for it to come back a few seconds later in its free fall.
Travis says that what we’re seeing is the motor from the rocket launch. That’s easily explained. What isn’t easily explained is where it went during the few frames when it was out of view. Is the rocket passing behind something? Or, is something passing in front of the rocket?
Final Thoughts
This episode was an absolute blast! I don’t think we learned much from the pyro drone experiment. What I can’t say is that it didn’t look cool as hell. Jim’s second video of the UAP (referring to the first UAP and not the rocket motor) is INCREDIBLY fascinating and unique. The speed this object had to be flying is wild.
The most compelling piece of data, I would agree with Erik, was how the beacon immediately connected outside of The Bubble. I still don’t know where I land on this whole Bubble thing, but I do know that what I saw was really odd. Could The Bubble be mimicking signals as communication? Or could it be sending out signals to interfere with our electronics? Who knows. What I do know is that we may very well be getting closer to uncovering The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch.
You can watch The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch: The Drone Zone (S6E2) and previous episodes on The History Channel.
