Brendan Jesus
Can you believe we’re already four episodes in? Time flies faster than a rocket. There is A LOT to get into this week, and I don’t have any good UFOlogy news for you. Let’s just get right into this week’s episode to see if we get any closer to uncovering The Secret…of Skinwalker Ranch.
Get Reamed
Mesa Drill Site. 10:42 AM.
Thomas Winterton and Alex Swanson (of Mark Construction) discuss the process of the reaming bit in the attempt to widen Borehole 1. Alex is unsure how much longer the reaming will take, as progress has slowed to a snail’s pace. Thomas radios Dr. Travis Taylor, Erik Bard, and Kaleb Bench and asks them to come over to where the drill is.
The three men walk over and immediately ask why the drill had stopped. Thomas says the drill has been moving inches an hour, which we already know was why they switched to the smaller reaming bit in Season 6 Episode 3 “Smoke It Out”. Thomas lays it out on the table. They can either continue with the current reaming bit, which will take who knows how long. Or they can start working on Borehole 2. Erik and Travis both agree that the instruments they want to insert into the hole would fit into Borehole 1’s current size.
It’s agreed that the best option is to encase Borehole 1 in cement and move on. Alex says it will take a day or two.
A Blast From The Past
Just a heads up, we’re going to get very technical here. I will resort to using many full quotes to ensure that I do not misrepresent any data.
Skinwalker Ranch Command Center. 2:24 PM.
Travis, Erik, and Kaleb are joined via video call by Brandon Fugal and biologist Ben Woodruff (who we first met in Season 5 Episode 2 “Holy Cow”). Ben was the man who received the possible Dire Wolf carcass that was found on the bend of the river at Dry Gulch Creek. It should be noted that the always quirky Brandon Fugal has an odd Annabelle-like doll sitting in a glass case over his left shoulder.
Brandon brought Ben back to go over some new developments. Since that potential Dire Wolf carcass, Brandon has been working closely with Colossal Biosciences, which is the leading genetics and life sciences company on the planet right now. Colossal was provided with samples of the carcass and has been running tests on it. That data is now back. And it’s a whopper.
Erik had asked Ben to analyze the unique-looking jawbone, and it had been theorized from the jawbone that the creature could be a Dire Wolf. And Dire Wolves went extinct more than 10,000 years ago.
Ben has been reviewing the data from Colossal and has drawn several conclusions. Here’s what we know. It’s some species of canine, so Ben and Brandon had Colossal test the carcass DNA against the DNA of other species of canine, like wolves, coyotes, foxes, and domestic dogs. Ben pulls up a pie chart which shows 11% of the DNA is canis lupus (the modern gray wolf). More specifically, it matches the DNA of the Eurasian gray wolf and the Greenland gray wolf.
What’s interesting about this is that while those two wolves are modern species, the strange thing is they’re two species of canines that don’t cross into each other’s ranges. And they’re also not found in the United States. Also, that’s just 11% of the DNA. The other 89% is a mystery. Yes, the 89% is still wolf DNA, but one that we don’t have any genetic record of.
“This wolf creature kind of rewrites the history books.” Ben Woodruff
This is either a new species of wolf or one that we don’t know of in this region. On top of that, Ben states that the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources claims there are no wolves or wolf packs in Utah. Since the DNA doesn’t give us the complete answer, Ben says we have to go off physical evidence. And the physical evidence perfectly points toward that of a juvenile Dire Wolf.
One day later. The Corral. 9:53 AM.
Rich Horwell (Trailcampro) meets with Kaleb and Ben Woodruff. He’s here to install new game cams. They set one up on the bend at Dry Gulch Creek. And a few more around other spots on the ranch.
It’s Show Time
The Triangle. 4:25 PM.
Travis, Erik, Kaleb, Thomas, Pete Kelsey, Jim Royston, and Sam Deriso meet with the team from LOC Precision (Allen Isdell and Mike & Jay Turicik, who can only be told apart because one of them has an earring). This large group of people is preparing to conduct a gigantic experiment to test the limits of The Bubble.
The team from LOC will be shooting off two types of rockets. First, they’ll be using a rocket filled with chalk, going up to a thousand feet in the air, maximum. Second, a rocket that goes five thousand feet in the air will be affixed with a KATE on board. The KATE is a sophisticated device that measures real-time data and GPS. Jim will be using his thermal drone, and Pete Kelsey will be using his LIDAR drone. Erik is at the Skinwalker Ranch Command Center, not the ARC (Sam Deriso is also stated to be at the SRCC, but it’s possible he could be at the ARC). Finally, Kaleb Bench will be using Pete’s SLAM Scanner.
Travis says the goal is to collect and compare as much data as possible from inside and outside of The Bubble.
The first 1K rocket is primed and ready, but Travis notices an odd 5.5 GHz signal. This is the first time we’ve seen The Bubble communicate with a signal this high in frequency. Thankfully, the first 1K rocket goes up without a hitch. It’s chalk deploys at around 1K feet, but Travis notes that the chalk seems to be floating in the air, rather than falling like it should.
Without any further issues, the first 5K rocket is primed and loaded. Both Erik and Travis report our good old friend, the 1.6 GHz signal. And it’s coming directly from the center of The Triangle. The 5K rocket is launched without issue.
“Now that’s a ROCKET!” – Travis Taylor
In Travis’s defense, it was one hell of a rocket! At 3,200 feet, the rocket’s free fall is interrupted by something. Rather than falling straight down, little to no wind is reported; the rocket seemingly hits the side of The Bubble and slides down the outside edge of it.
Later in the night, they prepare for round two of the launches. Jim gets his thermal drone up and flies it out toward the South Field (Dry Gulch Creek). He plans to fly it out past the boundaries of The Bubble and then fly it back in. Once Jim gets to the bend, where the Dire Wolf was found, the drone completely disconnects. The message shown on Jim’s controller says, “strong aircraft signal interference.” But there were no aircraft above them!
At the same time, Erik starts to get odd error messages on one of his screens. This is a new form of data corruption in the GPS tracking from Jim’s drone. It’s “Not just corrupting but inserting characters that cannot be read into the data system,” per Erik. Travis says it sounds like something has hacked into the system wirelessly and is changing code in real-time.
It’s now time for the second 1K rocket. It launches, but the rocket’s lights stop working post-launch. Jim comes over to Travis to inform him of his drone issue, but then they both hear from Pete over the radio. Travis and Jim go to see what Pete has, and it’s huge. Pete’s terrestrial LIDAR scanner shows the smoke from the previous rocket launch displaced by about 10 feet to the right.
Later in the night, the second 5K rocket is being set up. As it’s being set up, Jim points to the top of the Mesa and gets Travis to look. A white UAP is floating above it. Erik is able to pull it up on one of his cameras. It eventually blinks out of view.
Finally, the second 5K rocket is fired off. It goes up without issue, but, like the previous 5K rocket, it hits something at the 3,200-foot mark and falls in the exact same spot as the first.
Data Analysis
Skinwalker Ranch Command Center. 3:41 PM.
Travis, Erik, Thomas, Kaleb, and Jim sit around the table to discuss what they found. Erik pulls up high-speed camera footage of a UAP above the Mesa. It happened during the first rocket launch, when the mysterious 5.5 GHz signal appeared. The UAP moves east to west and fades in and out.
Then, Erik pulls up data from the first KATE rocket. Right off the bat, we see the GPS data veer off at 45 degrees before correcting itself. (This possibly is what Pete Kelsey picked up on the terrestrial LIDAR scanner.) Also, the data points fluctuate throughout The Bubble, BUT there are intense data anomalies around the 3,200-foot mark. Travis seems to think that there’s something directly above The Bubble that’s a completely different anomaly.
Is there a mystery spot above The Bubble? Does one control the other? Who knows, but it’s damn good television!
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You can watch The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch: Bursting the Bubble (S6E3) and previous episodes on The History Channel.
