The Effect
It is the early 1990s, and an ordinary American family has recently moved house. Their new home is a cattle ranch in the remote wilderness of the Uinta Basin in north-east Utah. But the Sherman family has not been living at the ranch long before a disturbing encounter occurs.
One evening, from the rear of their new property, the family notices a strange-looking animal. It is far off in the distance, but stalking closer, pausing, moving closer still. As it inches closer to the safety of their house, the Shermans see the animal is a wolf. But it is not just any wolf. This wolf is muscular and enormous, its shoulder reaching the chest of the six foot tall father of the family, Terry. As astonished as they are, the Shermans remain calm, but then the huge animal launches itself at one of their calves, attacking it savagely. Terry snatches up his gun, shooting the creature at point blank range. The bullet has no effect whatsoever. And when Terry fires a more powerful rifle, the same thing happens. Despite flesh rupturing from the wolf’s body, it calmly paces away. And, although Terry tracks the animal, after about a mile, all evidence of it completely vanishes, as if by magic. But, in the weeks that follow, more strange and other-worldly wolves are sighted pacing the land, disappearing just as abruptly as the first.
The Sherman family had had an odd feeling about the ranch when they arrived. The previous owners, an elderly couple called the Myers, they found, had fortified the place as if for an invasion. The doors fastened with a series of chunky, indomitable bolts, metal bars criss-crossing the windows, and chains were still welded to the walls as if guard dogs had once been tethered there.
At first, the Sherman family chalks this up to eccentricity on the part of the Myers, or their obsession with home security, but not long after the wolf incident, the Shermans begin to notice things going missing. Heavy equipment such as post diggers disappear, reappearing again twenty-feet up various trees. Then they begin to observe curious lights hovering above them, lights that soar fifty feet into the air, before whizzing off into the depths of the distant night sky.
Naturally perturbed by the strange events they’ve been experiencing, the Shermans begin to wonder whether there is something unusual about the land on which their ranch is built. There is even a local rumour about it being cursed. The indigenous Navajo people of the area, it is said, swear that sinister beings haunt the place. And they know the ridge to the north of the Shermans ranch by another name. Skinwalker Ridge.
Skinwalkers, in Navajo culture, are darkly malevolent, witch-like figures with the ability to shapeshift, most commonly transforming themselves into animals with burning red eyes. Could the gigantic wolf the Shermans witnessed shortly after they moved in, have actually been one of these terrifying beings in disguise?
The weird happenings at the ranch continue, with more unexplained lights observed by Terry and his wife Gwen as they tend their cattle. And this time, the lights do not merely hover and dart away. This time they flash, multi-coloured, like levitating disco balls. They tail the Shermans’ car, with triangular flying objects exiting the centres of them, as though they are portals to other dimensions entirely. At one point, Gwen is certain she even sees a seven foot humanoid figure standing in the centre of one of these lights, watching her.
But then, one winter, events at the ranch take a more disturbing turn, as the family’s cows start to go missing, one after the other, with no evidence of predator tracks, and no remains of the missing cows ever found. The following spring, other cows belonging to the Shermans are discovered in horrific states of mutilation, their back ends completely removed as though with surgical precision. More and more animals are discovered in this exact same state. And, every time they are, the Shermans say they see the same orange lights overhead, as if the lights are conscious, and selecting their next victim.
In April 1996, just two years after they move in, the Sherman family experiences the event that will finally drive them out of the ranch for good. It happens when their dogs spot a blue orb swooping over the land. It is apparently the size of a baseball, with a shell-like exterior and a centre filled with an incandescent liquid swirling as though boiling, and emitting a noticeable crackling sound. As the orb moves out of sight, the dogs follow. The next thing the Shermans hear is their frantic yelping. In the morning, when Terry investigates, he finds three large brown circles of burnt grass, his beloved dogs dead in the centre of them, a ‘greasy mess’.
Following this distressing incident, the Shermans want out. They go public about the traumatic happenings, recounting their experiences to a local newspaper. From here, the story spreads, the property, like the ridge to its north, becoming known as: Skinwalker Ranch.
The Shermans sell to Robert Bigelow, a millionaire real estate tycoon whose interests include the supernatural. Not long after he takes possession of Skinwalker Ranch, a team of experts are installed there. They are from the National Institute for Discovery Science, Bigelow’s own organisation, set up to research the paranormal.
And, as early as the NIDS team’s first day at Skinwalker Ranch, they discover the scorched grass and holes Terry described, see unidentified lights skimming the treetops. And the gruesome cattle mutilations continue, too. Although the Shermans have moved, their new property is only twenty miles away, and so Terry volunteers to work as ranch manager, maintaining his livestock there. One day, he is driving past an enclosure of bulls. Just forty minutes later, every single one of them has vanished. To Terry’s relief they are soon relocated, huddled in a small outbuilding, in a seemingly inert and hypnotic state. When a ranch hand calls out to Terry, it suddenly breaks the animals’ trance, and the bulls bolt forwards. The NIDS team, on hand to investigate the incident, notices the metal gate to the shed has been magnetised, with a charge that takes forty-eight hours to diminish.
And the extraordinary events continue to unfold. One night, after their dogs are frantically howling at some unseen entity, the NIDS team discovers an enormous animal high in a tree. It has yellow eyes and is estimated to weigh 400lbs. The team shoots at it, but the creature vanishes into thin air. The only thing that remains are two oval-shaped tracks in the earth, twenty feet apart, each comprising two vast claws like those of a fiendish bird of prey, a colossal six inches in diameter.
So just what was going on at the formidable Skinwalker Ranch, and what might explain the myriad bizarre and downright terrifying incidents that plagued the property throughout the nineties? Surely such abundant and varied phenomena, taking place over a number of years and researched by a professional team of investigators, would have yielded some convincing concrete evidence? It’s now up to the NIDS scientists to make sense of this evidence and get to the bottom of the secrets of Skinwalker Ranch, once and for all.
The Method
Robert Bigelow, the new owner of the terrifying Skinwalker Ranch, has his scientific paranormal investigation team carry out research at the property for a number of years. It’s a considerable span of time in which to gather conclusive proof of the UFOs, extraterrestrial beings or even shapeshifters that might be haunting this remote corner of Utah. However, the results of the NIDS investigation remain unclear to this day, having been kept confidential by Bigelow since it was carried out.
Was this because the evidence pointed to the Uinta Basin actually being inhabited by skinwalkers or being a hotspot of visitations from outer space… Or because, in reality, there wasn’t any evidence for anything of the sort?
In the early 2000s, the NIDS organisation was replaced by a government body funded by the Defence Intelligence Agency, who for a time also carried out research at Skinwalker Ranch. And, apparently, during their time in Utah, a large number of invited individuals visited the ranch, only to witness similar phenomena to the Shermans. However, it was said by those who were part of both investigations after the Shermans moved out, that no substantial evidence of anything unknown to science was ever recorded. There were only a few low quality videos and photographs of lights in the sky, and a handful of hazy plaster cast impressions of various tracks.
When presented with the claim that the NIDS team had never amassed any proof of strange happenings at Skinwalker Ranch, Robert Bigelow would allegedly fly into a rage. He later sold the ranch to a real estate company.
In 2005, twenty years after the original incidents witnessed by the Sherman family, the book Hunt for the Skinwalker was published. It became the go-to account of the peculiar happenings at the ranch, from the Myers family, to Terry and Gwen Sherman, to the NIDS investigation. But it later transpired that the book’s authors had never even interviewed Terry about his experiences at Skinwalker Ranch. In fact, at the time, Terry had no idea that there was a book being written about his former home. When he did find out about it, he stated the stories recounted in the book were not accurate, and instead based on hearsay. Yet - beyond speaking to the local newspaper - he never actually clarified what his family’s experiences had been. Moreover, if what had happened to the Shermans at the ranch had not been accurately recorded in the book, did that mean the book’s account of the NIDS team’s investigation was unreliable, too?
Despite the book having its inaccuracies, its account did still partially resemble Terry Sherman’s original claims. And those original claims still leave us with a fascinating story to dissect. What might have been behind those illuminated orbs in the sky, the mutilated cattle, the dead dogs, monstrous wolves and teleported bulls? Could it have been a hoax, a delusion or a misidentification?
Theory One: A Hoax
Could the entire story of the Skinwalker Ranch have been a hoax, orchestrated by the Shermans in order to sell their property? Might Terry Sherman have been losing cattle to predation, a dispute with a neighbour, or disease? If this had been the case then he would have needed to sell Skinwalker Ranch quickly, but would anyone have been interested in buying a cattle ranch so deadly for cattle? By presenting the ranch as a hotbed of skinwalker activity and extraterrestrial visitations, Terry Sherman instead created a very attractive prospect for Robert Bigelow, a gullible business tycoon with money to burn, and a pre-existing fascination with the paranormal. The counter-argument to this theory, however, is the fact that Terry was reportedly offered more money for the ranch by other buyers than the amount he subsequently sold it for. And, with the exception of this sale, he never profited from the story. Terry himself, it is said, was convinced the US military was behind the extraordinary goings-on at his former home.
Theory Two: A Delusion
Were the incredible events at Skinwalker Ranch actually a delusion? Could Terry Sherman or his wife have been suffering from some psychological complaint? None of the players in the story - the Myers or the Shermans - were ever medically or psychologically assessed. Could the Shermans, in particular, traumatised by the brutal killings of their animals and with their livelihoods at risk, have thought they really were seeing lights in the sky and portals to other dimensions, when really they were just planes or satellites? The gigantic wolves, just native predators. In other words, the Shermans saw one thing and, reeling from the savage destruction of their cattle, their distressed minds filled in the rest.
Theory Three: Misidentification
Perhaps the most interesting theory as to the happenings at the ranch may be provided by the environment of the vast landscape of the Uinta Basin and its unique weather. The area is known for its seismic activity, with the ranch and its land lying close to geological fault lines. Might shifting plates in the earth have caused the unidentified tracks on the ground? Or could meteorological patterns like ball lightning or sunlight projected through fog onto the Uinta Mountains have caused the appearance of UFO lights and alien figures? If Terry Sherman’s cattle had been predated naturally or killed by a vicious neighbour, then, having seen the lights in the sky, perhaps it was logical in his mind to link these two disturbing things. Or perhaps the cattle were poisoned by something they were feeding on off the land, and again, Terry linked the natural phenomena he saw - which he unknowingly misidentified as alien activity - and these poisonings.
So was there a logical explanation for everything reported at Skinwalker Ranch over the years? Or might the events reported there really have been paranormal? Or perhaps even a strange melting pot of the two?
Today Skinwalker Ranch sits in its remote corner of north-east Utah, amidst roads blocked-off by ‘no entry’ signs and signs warning of the penalties of trespassing. But some locals are adamant that, despite no concrete proof ever having been collected, the strange goings-on at Skinwalker Ranch continue unabated to this day.
© 2025, Lora Jones. All rights reserved. Reproduction prohibited without written permission.
