'The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch' Episode 3: Equipment go haywire but investigation continues into secret room
Skinwalker Ranch has baffled many for years over reports of unexplained other-worldly events on the site such as encounters with strange creatures, UFO sightings, cattle mutilations and flashing lights across the sky.
An investigation team's efforts to uncover the mysteries and get to the root of what causes these events were filmed and outsiders are being allowed to watch these efforts for the first time through History Channel's 'The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch'.
Real estate magnate Brandon Fugal put together a team that was introduced to viewers in the first episode. There's Travis Taylor, an astrophysicist; Erik Bard, the principal investigator; Jim Segala, a scientist; Thomas Winterton, the ranch superintendent; Jim Morse, the ranch manager, and Bryant 'Dragon' Arnold, the head of security.
The first episode featured a tour of the ranch given to Taylor who had just joined the team. While some members of the team discuss digging on the site, others disagree, citing Tom Winterton's mysterious medical emergency that caused a "goose egg" to form on the back of his head.
This medical emergency happened again in the second episode when the team investigated a sinkhole and proceeded to have a stakeout to figure out what was going on at Skinwalker Ridge.
In this week's episode of 'The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch', while some want to proceed with caution, Winterton and Taylor want to get to the bottom of what's happening. First, a thermal camera on a drone is employed. While surveying a part of the ranch, they don't see anything out of the ordinary. However, when they move with the drone to the ridge, the drone does not connect to the remote control and they are left to consider other options.
This is when Taylor brings in a friend of his from the University of Alabama in Huntsville who is an expert at monitoring remote objects using weather balloons. While the wind is minimal when they start, it soon picks up. This results in their first balloon being lost but they are able to retrieve the equipment. They launch a second balloon but modify their plan to let the balloon go untethered and monitor it remotely using GPS and other data.
However, after a certain point, the equipment on the balloon stops emitting data — at around the same height that Taylor and the others had deduced that the radioactive signals come from. Segal realizes that for the signals to come from that area, the source must be something off-planet and not built by humans.
Later, Taylor and Winterton go to Homestead One where the ranch keeper had noticed some strange sounds. Winterton reveals that he had made a hole in one of the walls in the basement to investigate and found it led to another room. On sending a camera in, they realize it's a small, square-shaped, empty room. They also notice debris on the ground — more than the amount that Winterton would have made from the hole he created.
In the next episode, Winterton and Taylor will try to enter the room to investigate more. Things promise to look interesting as a sneak peek shows that the debris in the mystery room could also contain human remains.
In its third week in, the History Channel show still lacks any real answers, which might be frustrating for viewers at this point. With the focus pointing to something else, we may never be told what's happening on the ridge.
'The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch' will air on History Channel on Tuesday nights at 10 pm ET/PST.
