Brendan Jesus
Welcome back, fellow ranchers! Due to the time this episode was uploaded, I’m very behind. Sorry! So, let’s jump right into this week’s jam-packed episode: The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch: “Lights Out.”
We’re In A Jam With This Jelly
Mesa Drill Site. 11:36 AM.
Dr. Travis Taylor, Erik Bard, Thomas Winteron, and Kaleb Bench join the team of Mark Construction at the Mesa Drill Site. Kyle Blair tells them they’re about 170 feet into Borehole 2. Thankfully, it seems we’ve been making better progress and running into fewer issues on this borehole. Kyle does tell them about one slight problem. Before reaching the 170-foot mark, they get stuck on a few really hard layers of something.
The spoils pit is ready to be released.. Archaeologist Chris Roberts starts examining the spoils and immediately spots something funky. Chris calls the team over, and they come to take a gander. Little do they know, they’re about to see something they haven’t seen in quite some time. At the top of the spoils pit is a plethora of green jelly.
We know, from a previous study, that this is a charcoal-based burnt plant material. Travis says if this is the same material pulled out from Borehole 1, then it could be more evidence of a massive fire beneath the Mesa.
Laser Space Cannons!
Don’t fret, friends. Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn’t make an appearance in this episode! I know that title sounds like something she would blurt out in the middle of a FEMA hearing.
The Corral. 3:35 PM.
Travis, Erik, Thomas, Kaleb, Jim Royston, and Sam Deriso meet with Tim Anderson and his team from Nu-Salt Laser. In 2023, Nu-Salt was on the ranch with lasers and found something interesting. At around 2,000 feet in the sky, long before The Bubble was discussed, the team captured a distinct stop in the laser beam. We now know that 2,000 feet is around the top of The Bubble.
Nu-Salt is back with bigger, badder, and more colorful lasers.
Everyone heads over to The Triangle to start setting up for the night’s experiment. Nu-Salt has 18 lasers in tow. The plan is to set up groups of three lasers at the following locations: East Field, east border of The Bubble, Homestead 2, at the ARC, directly on The Triangle, and the Mesa Drill Site. Jim will attempt to fly a thermal drone from the South Field toward The Bubble while the lasers are shining.
7:14 PM.
The lasers at the ARC are turned on. Immediately, Jim and Sam notice a UAP in the sky. Kaleb radios Erik, who is at the Skinwalker Ranch Command Center. Erik tells them that he doesn’t have anything on his ADS-B. All eyes are now turned to the sky, but the UAP vanishes.
The ARC lasers turn off as soon as the UAP vanishes. A Nu-Salt worker goes to check them out, and they turn back on with the drop of a hat. Travis says this is another case of something appearing in the sky as equipment malfunctions. He also says that correlation doesn’t always equal causation. Say what you will about Travis, but it’s nice to see him be grounded every now and then.
Travis, Thomas, and Chris grab a bunch of rockets and head over to Homestead 2. They plan to fire off some rockets to see if anything anomalous appears around the lasers in the high-speed cameras. Nu-Salt gets the other 15 lasers up and running as Travis prepares for the first rocket launch.
Jim gets his thermal drone airborne, but it quickly loses connection. Travis notices a 1.2 GHz signal and three 1.6 GHz signals as the drone goes offline.
Travis fires the first rocket. It’s a perfect flight. Suddenly, Jim’s drone encounters more errors. Experiencing multiple errors, the drone completely aborts its mission. Erik tells them that he saw a data corruption error in his GPS tracking at the same moment when the drone aborts. This occurs at the moment when the drone passes through The Bubble barrier.
Thomas makes an interesting observation…the Mesa Drill Site laser isn’t showing the green beam. Erik confirms the same thing from the Command Center. He can only see the red laser from the east side barrier of The Bubble.
Travis, Thomas, and Chris get back in their vehicles and head toward the Mesa Drill Site to fire off a rocket from inside The Bubble. Once there, Travis notices a loud beeping. His gamma-ray detector shows over 700 counts per minute. Those levels are not natural.
They all hop in their vehicles and speed out of there. The high-level gamma rays follow them all the way to The Triangle. As they arrive at The Triangle, the lasers at The Triangle go out. That’s when a low-flying, bright green UAP zips over their head toward the Command Center.
Travis grabs a second gamma-ray detector. When he holds the detector, it shows over 1900 cpm, and shows normal levels when he isn’t. Travis seems to believe they’re experiencing electromagnetic interference and are not in any danger. Erik, thinking on his feet, sends a third gamma-ray detector for Chris’s vehicle.
Thomas says they’ll start slowly, working their way back to the Mesa Drill Site, monitoring the gamma-ray detectors the whole time. They make it safely.
Travis sets up the rocket at the Mesa Drill Site and fires it off. As the rocket launches, the lasers at the ARC go out. Then the Mesa Drill Site lasers go out. Thankfully, the lasers at the ARC come back on.
Nu-Salt’s Adam Scott captures a peculiar photo as the ARC lasers come back online. It looks like something is flying horizontally through the lasers. This is great, but Travis decides they need to launch a third rocket from the east.
We meet back up with Jim at the South Field. Jim’s thermal drone is still experiencing technical errors at The Bubble boundary. Kaleb is using a FLIR and is filming Jim’s drone. He notices Jim’s drone disappear temporarily as it crosses the barrier. Erik corroborates their experience with GPS data corruption as the drone enters The Bubble.
Travis gets the final rocket setup at the East Field. This final rocket will be launched near The Bubble’s eastern barrier while Nu-Salt uses a raster scan. This is basically a specialized horizontal laser projector that will be placed at the South Tower. It’ll shoot various laser beams in raster patterns, side-to-side, in order to cover a large area.
The raster scan turns on, and the third rocket launches. Everything seems to go off without a hitch.
Data Time (Skinwalker Ranch: Lights Out)
Skinwalker Ranch Command Center. The next day. 2:15 PM.
Travis, Erik, Thomas, Kaleb, Jim, and Sam sit around the table inside the Command Center.
Jim pulls up video from his thermal drone. We again see the errors we witnessed at the time they occurred, this time from the unique POV of the drone, which looks as if it’s battling gale-force winds, providing a reason for what happened as the drone tried to enter The Bubble barrier. Erik has GPS data that shows the exact moment this happened. We can see the GPS data error right as the drone touches the barrier.
Erik also has GPS data from the Jeeps used by Erik, Thomas, and Chris. The Jeep’s GPS data completely goes underground near Homestead 2. If you remember, Jim Stratton was on the ranch in 2022 and had a similar issue when his Jeep headed toward Homestead 2.
But wait, there’s more! Erik pulls up a still shot created from images built from long exposures. We see the laser cannons in the East Field. There is a gap in the laser’s green beam. This is odd because the beams are incredibly close together. So, how is something blocking out one singular beam in a cluster? Erik has a second image of this from a different angle. This image shows what looks like a UAP flying through the laser beams.
There’s one final, slightly compelling video. It’s a video of what appears to be two UAPs flying above the lasers. Both vanish after a few seconds. They’re all certain these are not low-earth orbiting satellites. Kaleb notices a quick flash in the video, which appears to be…a third UAP.
Final Thoughts (Skinwalker Ranch: Lights Out)
The gamma-ray detector moment was the first time this show has ramped up the energy in quite some time. It seems like the stakes this season are very low. Remember when this show used to have radiation burns and crew members being rushed to the hospital due to odd health issues? I’m not asking them to fabricate anything, but it seems that they occasionally forget that high-energy stakes will keep viewers entertained and engaged.
I don’t know how I feel about the laser gaps/blockages evidence. It could be something as simple as a quick-flying bird or a low-hanging cloud. I don’t think the showrunners understand how uninteresting these laser experiments are. Spending time staring at lasers with minor deviations from them isn’t compelling. But hey, at least we got some rockets.
You can watch The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch: Lights Out (S6E7) and previous episodes on The History Channel. And check out more of Brendan’s coverage from this and previous seasons.
