UFO Media Matters have a discussion on the NIDS and Skinwalker Ranch, which touches on the problems the investigators' approach brought, resulting in a less than satisfactory outcome. However, I have had some niggles of my own about the story presented and wonder if there are other explanations beyond the simple Believer/Skeptic dichotomy.

I have been concerned about the details presented in the book for a while and they break down into a couple of other broad options, with a few sub-options thrown in for good measure.

The NIDS are being lied to

All the wildest high-strangeness occurred when no one but the Gorman family (who owned the place) were present. Investigators would often spend fruitless days poking around the pastures and, as soon as they packed up and left left, they'd start hearing of crazy goings on. Personally if that was me I'd have been worried someone was yanking my chain. Granted some oddity was witnessed by researchers but it was all orders of magnitude lower on the Freakout Scale - lot of it could be down to people getting over-excited by the stranger reports and misinterpreting more easily explained phenomena.

I do find this explanation difficult to believe - there is no clear reason for the family to make up such whoppers and the reports simply make no sense. This last point is important, not just here but with other mind-boggling accounts of high strangeness. Take for example the Skinwalker accounts. If any ordinary person attempted to create a plausible lie they'd impose some kind of form or structure on it. In contrast what is outlined in the book is an attempt to impose some kind of structure on a "plot" that seems to have been created by a hyperactive Fortean on twice daily DMT enemas or some prankster constructing the plot, cut-up style, by grabbing a dozen of the odder books from the "Weird" section in a bookshop, shredding them and sticking some of the bits back together again. Things crop up, hang around for a bit and are never heard from again and other things (the like of which aren't seen outside of bad sci-fi) make one off lunges into the spotlight. I've met mad rambling tramps who drink petrol, that can make up a tale that'd have more chance of convincing normal folk. The only target audience this hypothetical hoax would have is anomalists with a severely jaded palate or thrill-seeking sensationalists out to get their jollies from suckling strange milk from some freakish teats. So basically, a very restricted audience then.

The NIDS are lying to us

As previously discussed, the NIDS have some very shady connections with the military-occult complex who have interests in both UFOs/paranormal and non-lethal weapons. This could suggest that the NIDS aren't being straight with us for the following possible reasons:

1. It was some kind of Scooby Doo plot to get their hands on the ranch - they use a combination of mind hacking, prophet holograms, infrasound and all sorts of other goodies, until the family cry out for help and then the NIDS move in and scoop up the ranch. The question would then be: Why would they bother? A tricky one. I doubt it is buried confederate gold but there could be something special about the ranch's location perhaps, which leads neatly into the next point:


2. The bulk of the story is misdirection - the book throws out such a wild avalanche of anomalies in order to bury the one nugget of truth. If anyone ever discovered what was real, no one in the mainstream would take it seriously.


3. The NIDS are experimenting on the family - there are no hidden nuggets of truth to be found, just the NIDS testing things out in the field. Lab tests are all fine and dandy but if you want to play at memetic engineering it has to be deployed in the wild on an unsuspecting public in a fairly controlled situation. A situation just like the Ranch. After all, it seems The Aviary (or a related group) are interested in doing something similar online.

Of course, these aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.

So what is the Truth? If it was an ordinary group of paranormal investigators then I'd lean towards it being "true" (or at least as true an account as people can give) or the Gormans were lying, as there is just too much for this to be a simple misperception of something simpler.

However, throw in the NIDS and their spook friends (with all the disnfo and deception they bring to the party) and all bets are off..

So what is happening? Damned if I know (damned if I don't). The staccato hammer blows of high-strangeness positively reek of cognitive dissonance. Unfortunately, who is dissonanting whose cognition is almost impossible to tell. Adding the NIDS to an already wild and whacky mix just serves to add enough extra levels of obfuscation to throw everyone off the track. Perhaps that is the point?

The real pity is that, whatever way you cut it, something odd seems to have happened on that ranch. Whether it is otherworldly or of more human invention the "truth", whatever flavour it comes in, it is of great interest to open-minded researchers (and could cast some very interesting light on... something). Unfortunately, despite the impressive heap of information we have about the site, we seem to be rather lacking in any kind of facts that can be definitively nailed down.

In the end it feels like another "one that got away" seemingly wriggling out from between our fingers as we look at it. This is, of course, very frustrating and I can't see any clear route back to the right track beyond another less intensive investigation from a third-party. So can I come and camp on the ranch Mr Bigelow? Pretty please.

Hat tip

Book:

Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah (pb)
by Colm A. Kelleher and George Knapp
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com