Bad medicine (Part Two)

They say "Everything's all right"
They say "Better days are near"
They tell us "These are the good times"
They don't live around here - Warren Zevon

Back to Skinwalker Ranch. And let's jump right into it.

Perhaps the strangest and most provocative aspect to the story is that of the "orange structure" which often appeared low in the ranch's western sky and was allegedly viewed by all members of the Gorman family on dozens of occasions. (The family name is actually Sherman, but they're pseudonymously identified in Colm Kelleher and George Knapp's Hunt for the Skinwalker). It was nearly perfectly round, though it appeared flattened rather than spherical. (It's appearance changed according to the angle at which it was viewed. On one occasion of its appearance Tom Gorman, the father, was driving off of the property, and approached it from the side. As he did, it seemed to thin until it was undetectable, as if it were two-dimensional. Though even that doesn't do justice to the strangeness, since it could not be seen from the opposite direction.)

When he observed it through binoculars long after the sun had set, Tom claimed he could see, in the middle of the orange mass, "another sky." A blue sky, while the ranch's sky was black. Kelleher and Knapp write that "Tom felt like it could have been a tear or a rent in the sky about a mile away, and through the rent he could see a different world or perhaps a different time.... For Gorman, this was a rare glimpse into what might actually be happening on his property."

On two nights particular while Tom observed the orange structure its "other sky" was not visible; its centre instead had the appearance of multiple layers of an onion that receded from him. As he watched, he saw a "fast-moving black object that was silhouetted perfectly against the bright orange background." It was moving rapidly through the centre of the structure and soon exited, silently, into the Utah night sky, where Gorman soon lost sight of it.

This almost beggars credulity, and so it should. But such extraordinary sights are not unknown in the American west. A family of ranchers named Bradshaw had a two-year brush with high weirdness near Sedona, Arizona in the early 90s, including encounters with glowing orbs, poltergiests, cattle mutilations and strange humanoids. They also claimed to witness a similar "structure" in the sky that appeared to serve as a gateway between different realities. (The Bradshaw's story is told in a book entitled Merging Dimensions: The Opening Portals of Sedona.)

A similar uncanny event was reported to have occured the night of August 25, 1997, after the ranch had purchased by Robert Bigelow. A pair of researchers withBigelow's National Institute for Discovery Science, identified as "Jim" and "Mike" in Hunt for the Skinwalker, were sitting silently on the edge of a bluff in the middle of the night, monitoring a pasture. At one point Jim climbed down into the field to meditate, as he had found that meditation sometimes "activated the phenomenon." A couple of hours later atop the bluff, at about 2:30 a.m., Jim's eye caught a faint, yellow light on a track through the field, about 150 feet bellow. As he watched it brighten, he gestured to Mike. They both watched, and it grew bigger as well as brigher. Jim took out his camera and Mike his night-vision binoculars. The light appeared positioned above the ground, rather than situated upon it. Mike whispered, "It's a tunnel. Not just a light."

And then: "Jesus Christ - something's in the tunnel! Oh, my God. There is a black creature climbing out. I see his head. It has no face. It's on the ground. Oh my God, it walked away." Mike reported it to be huge - maybe six feet tall and 400 pounds. Shortly thereafter, the yellow circle dimmed, shrunk and vanished.

After 15 minutes and no further sighting, the pair climbed down to the track. At the spot where the "tunnel" had appeared, there remained only the strong, pungent smell of sulfur. Jim's film showed the smudge of yellow light, but nothing more.

On four different occasions NIDS asked a number of well-respected remote viewers, most of whom had been employed by "Project Stargate," to independently engage in blind targetting of the ranch. That is, they were given no information about what they were to be looking at, or expectations about what they might find. They were given a random coordinate and asked to describe events associated with it. One, identified only in Hunt for the Skinwalker as "one of the most uncannily accurate remote viewers alive today" (a frequent description of Joseph McMoneagle), produced a "near exact" sketch of the ranch, identifying features, as well as a spot in the southwest corner of the property which he said harboured a "disturbing" energy. In a later test, another viewer was asked to provide impressions of a daytime calf mutilation. According to Kelleher and Knapp, he sensed that a robotic drone had carried it out, and that it might have been of "interdimensional origin." He also added that the drone "had some connection" to the US military. Other viewers also suggested some inexplicable military involvement with a foreign and frightening Other. They had impressions of uniformed men in dark sunglasses and naval tatoos, and inhuman entities speaking an unknown language.

Consistently and independently, the remote viewers expressed feelings of "dread, nervousness, darkness and death" associated with their blind targetting of the property.

Pointedly, the phenomenon became more fleeting after NIDS began its investigation. There were observations of paranormal events - orbs, cattle mutilations, weird entities - but they did not have the frequency noted by the Gormans, and over the years of investigation the weirdness essentially dried up. Kelleher and Knapp make an interesting observation, one I've made here previously about the nature of similar encounters with the weird:

Was there something now missing from the engagement? Perhaps it was the level of emotion that the Gorman family had provided in spades but was missing from the scientific team. The stress level in the family was unbelievably high. It was palpable. The Gormans did not interact with the phenomenon because they wanted to; they simply had no choice. In contrast, the NIDS scientific personnel were there by choice. They carried with them an attitude of cool detachment. There was almost an aggressiveness in the pursuit of the phenomenon that may have psychologically turned the tables, assuming of course that a consciousness was involved.

It seems nearly a maxim that weirdness of this high order seeks out those who don't expect it and are therefore less prepared to cope with it. Again, it's the "garmonbozia" principle: fear is a favourite delicacy at the feast of intense human emotions.

And what can we make of the suggestion of military involvement. The Gorman family and area residents noted strange mechanical noises and hums from beneath the ground. The same has been said of Dulce and other sites, supporting for some the claims of a vast network of underground military-alien bases. (I've written previously why I consider that to be disinformation.) Yet the indigenous peoples of the region tell of having heard the same noises underfoot for generations, since before there was a United States. So what is it? If there's something down there, it's been there a long time.

There does appear to be a thread in need of untangling which connects the US military, high weirdness and Native American tradition and land, particularly sacred sites. The San Luis Valley of Colorado for instance, where Maurice Strong and his then wife built their "Valley Of the Refuge Of World Truths," is a holy place for many indigenous nations, including the Navajo. There's Indio's Cabazon Indian Reservation, notorious for Casolaro's Octopus and now also the trial of Richard Hamlin. (Hamlin's father-in-law Sidney Siemer, whom he accuses of ritually abusing his wife Susan, "freely admits" having worked there in the 1980s during the time of Wackenhut and PROMIS. Before she recanted her testimony, Susan claimed to remember her father subjecting her to mind control torture in an Indio warehouse.)

Dread, nervousness, darkness and death. That's some pretty heady stuff to tap into. The skinwalker ranch makes a fine spooky story, but if it and stories like it describe genuine phenomena then we should be more than spooked. We should be alert as well. Because maybe it also informs our estimate of the situation. Maybe it can help us understand who is trying to tap into what, and why.