Brendan Jesus
This week’s episode of Mystery at Blind Frog Ranch: Spies in the Sky is a whopper. It’s full of special guests, governmental intrigue, and so much more. For the sake of time constraints, we’ll get right into this new episode (plus, I don’t have any interesting Ufology news). What I will say is there is a jaw-dropping moment in this episode that had me beyond excited! Let’s see what the boys are up to this week and find out if we get any closer to the Mystery at Blind Frog Ranch.
Trailer Trash
Charlie Boy and Duane Ollinger are rushing to the south road on the ranch as Charlie Boy got an alert of a vehicle on the property. They were alerted to a truck that had come off the mountain, and it was hauling a trailer.
When they arrive at the trailer’s location, it’s revealed that the trailer was locked and left right on the edge of Blind Frog Ranch and Bureau of Land Management property. The trailer is chock-full of solar panels, wires, a camera, and a speaker system. Its wheels are also locked.
Duane and Charlie Boy examine this trailer and rumble about how terrible it is that someone is doing this so close to their property. Suddenly, a voice comes out of the trailer. The voice tells them to step away, as this is a federally protected trailer. It also tells them that it’s for a federal program to monitor cloud seeding. One final warning is issued: tampering with the trailer is a violation of the law.
Shifting Focus
Duane and Charlie Boy are joined by Eric Drummond, Chad Ollinger, James Keenan, and Josh Feldman at the Hideout. Duane reveals to them what the trailer said. They’ve come to a crossroads at this point. Do they proceed with their treasure hunt and overlook the multiple violations committed against them? Or do they focus on identifying the recent trespassers?
Duane says they need to temporarily stop their treasure hunt.
Holy Moly
Eric heads over to the hole left by the removed cylinder. He takes a composite sample. The hope here is to find a trace or clue about what the cylinder was made of or if it had a traceable power source.
With the composite sample under the microscope, Eric quickly notices tiny silver metal particulates. He also makes note of the high luster and lack of rust on the particulates. From this, he deduces that the cylinder was probably made out of a steel alloy. Due to the noticeable lack of trenching in the surrounding ground, Eric also notes that the removed cylinder was the only one in the area.
Eric discusses how the cylinder was definitely in the ground for at least three months, but it could have been in there for up to three years. One thing Eric is certain of is that, due to how long it was in the ground without any outside interference, it was most likely powered by something nuclear.
Wanting to test this theory, Eric grabs his Geiger Counter. He sticks the wand in the hole, and it immediately goes off. Eric tells the entire crew to back away as quickly as possible. This is now the second time this season that Eric has evacuated a spot due to high radioactivity.
Later that day, Eric joins up with the entire crew at the Miner’s Shack. Eric reveals his hypothesis of the cylinder being nuclear-powered and posits that it was most likely fueled by a tiny bead of plutonium. Duane questions how a random person could get plutonium. Eric responds that it’s possibly military-related and that plutonium is highly regulated.
The Doctor Is In
Ryan Skinner is back on the ranch! He meets up with Duane and Charlie Boy at the Hideout. Ryan has studied secret government programs in this area for nearly two decades. It seems like he’s the best direction for them to go if they have any hope of getting to the bottom of whatever this is.
Ryan watches the cylinder video. Interestingly, Ryan has seen people dressed like the trespasser before near Skinwalker Ranch. He also notes that incidents like these have occurred and are still happening throughout the Uinta Basin. Ryan decides the best course of action is to call an expert in this field.
Later that day, the entire crew (with Ryan Skinner) meets with Dr. Jim Segala (physicist) at the Hideout. Dr. Segala’s background is in fabricating specialized electronic equipment to read very delicate signals. He’s shown the video and believes it could be a seismic geophone. There’s another interesting thing: a few years ago, Dr. Segala designed something very similar to the cylinder, which he deployed in subterranean poles and caves.
The device created by Dr. Segala, and the one seemingly pulled from the ground, is used to monitor microwave energy, gamma energy, and gravitational vectors, OR it could simply be monitoring seismic activity. Dr. Segala asks if they’re familiar with Gravity Base Vernal.
Recently declassified documents reveal that Gravity Base Vernal was a geological survey base just a handful of miles away from both Blind Frog and Skinwalker Ranch. It was located in McCoy Flats. The base was used, at that time, by the United States Geological Survey. Gravity Base Vernal was then commandeered by NASA and the CIA in the 70s for unknown reasons. The entire property was soon disassembled shortly after.
Duane tells Chad and James that they will be going to check out McCoy Flats because those agencies don’t do anything for the hell of it.
Chad-vity Base Keenan (that’s terrible!)
Chad and James head out to check out the location where Gravity Base Vernal once stood. One of the first things they find is a rusted door hinge covered in dirt. Interestingly, the entire thing is covered in gravel. It’s almost as if once everything was taken down, a fresh layer of gravel was placed over the property. A telescope anchor is still bolted into the ground.
Chad starts to use a metal detector and quickly finds bullet casings. They also see many footers for buildings still in the ground, as well as tons of wires. But it’s James who makes the most fascinating discovery. James finds a busted reel of magnetic tape on the ground. (Magnetic tape was used for data saving on older computers–pre-floppy!).
The lid of the container says, what they believe, the words “Greeley” and “DuPont”.
An Old Friend!
Avid readers of our Skinwalker Ranch coverage will be familiar with the name I’m about to bring up.
Ryan Skinner is at the Hideout and gets on a video call with a friend he thinks can help give some answers. Who is that friend? Jeremy McGowan!! Ryan asks Jeremy what he thought about the cylinder video. Jeremy says it could be two or three possibilities.
The first is that it could be military or paramilitary operations. Second, a civilian contractor or private security. One thing is clear: the person knew what they were looking for. It could be a private defense contractor’s personal security, it could be DoD, or an intelligence agency.
Jeremy wants to put Ryan in touch with one of his contacts. Due to the nature of this contact’s previous work, he must remain anonymous. In fact, Jeremy says, he will contact you.
Greeley And DuPont
Chad and James meet up with the entire crew at the Miner’s Shack. They show the team the magnetic tape. Eric is excited by this find and says it’s a type of polycrystalline metallic film. Unfortunately, it’s highly oxidized and most likely completely ruined.
James decides to look up the words “Greeley” and “DuPont” in a FOIA database. The search immediately yields many declassified results. It turns out that DuPont is actually DuMont. These two names were used for nuclear bomb tests. They also find information on unknown aircraft in the same documents. Much of these documents discuss the study of acoustic signals from the sky.
Later that night, Ryan hits the road to meet up with Jeremy’s contact. The contact sends Ryan coordinates to an empty lot and says to meet there. Ryan shows up, and a truck eventually pulls up in front of him. A man gets out of the truck, hands Ryan a flash drive, and promptly speeds away.
Ryan plugs the flash drive into his computer and is surprised at what he sees. It’s a BAASS (Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Sciences) shipping manifest with the subject of UASP Test Run @ The Ranch, and with the dates of January 14-29.
Ryan shares this information with the team at the Hideout the next day. The equipment in this shipping manifest is strikingly similar to the cylinder. Ryan thinks the best move from here is to bring Dr. Segala back to the ranch.
Dr. Segala shows up that night. He wants to put his cylinder in the ground where the removed one was. The thought here is that if they can analyze the data collected by Segala’s cylinder, then maybe they can ascertain why it was placed in that specific spot. Segala’s cylinder will record changes in levels of electromagnetic and nuclear radiation as well as light, radio, and acoustic waves.
The cylinder is put in the ground.
One day later, the entire team meets up at the Hideout to look over Dr. Segala’s data. It’s quickly noted that the information doesn’t look normal. The magnetic field data oscillates by the hour, which we’re told is atypical. This means that something from above perturbed the magnetic field. That would have to be done by a flying object — an unknown flying object! Segala’s cylinder also picked up a bunch of sound waves from deep below the ground!
Final Thoughts
This episode was placed perfectly in the season. If they had done something like this mid-season 3, I would have hated it. But, to me, it felt like it fit right in. Sure, I was bummed that we had an episode where nothing super scientific took place, but it had a high energy that the season desperately needed.
Although I may be slightly biased because I was super-excited to see Jeremy McGowan.
We’ve experienced the rumblings on the ranch multiple times. Could Dr. Segala’s data reveal more truth about that? I don’t necessarily believe the government is spying on the ranch with the trailer, but I have thoughts on cloud seeding that would probably put me on a list somewhere, so I’ll bite my tongue.
Anyways, thanks for reading this week’s coverage! Even though this episode doesn’t get us any closer to the treasure, we do learn one thing: someone else is interested in getting to the bottom of the Mystery…at Blind Frog Ranch.
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Catch Mystery at Blind Frog Ranch: Spies in the Sky on Discovery or with a Max subscription.
