Skinwalker Ranch

Posted: 02.27.2025 | Updated: 04.29.2025

Skinwalker Ranch, also identified as Sherman Ranch, is a business found on roughly 512 acres (207 hectares) southeast of Ballard, Utah. The ranch, about a half a day’s drive from Denver or 3 hours from Salt Lake City, is reputed to be the site of a series of paranormal and UFO- activities.

Its name is taken from the skin-walker of Navajo legend, a shaman or witch doctor with an affinity for havoc.

Read ahead and get a gander at the insanity, bloody and oftentimes terror-inducing, that is this less than quaint circle of hell located in Utah. We assure you it is well worth making a trip down from the Rocky Mountains to investigate the high strangeness taking place here.

Stay local with Denver Ghosts and hear about all the peculiarities taking place in the Mile High City on a Denver ghost tour!

What is Skinwalker Ranch’s History?

For eons, natives have reported bizarre happenings on the land that Skinwalker Ranch occupies in Utah.

Nonetheless, the ranch became popular in strange Americana folklore when UFO reports started appearing like dandelions on a summer field during the 1970s in the Uinta Basin.

They flooded the local press. 

Claims about Skinwalkwe Ranch as such, not just the area, first appeared in 1996 in Salt Lake City, Utah’s Desert News. Next it appeared in the alternative weekly Las Vegas Mercury. A string of articles by investigative reporter George Knapp that expanded on the area’s odd occurrences.

The stories detailed a family’s claim of experienced puzzling and hair-raising experiences after they bought and moved into the Utah property.

Some have called it THE supernatural hotspot the high deserts of the west. Others have labeled the land as it “cursed.” 

Terry Sherman and his wife Gwen were one of the first to speak up about the weird guano happenings in their newly acquired cattle ranch. It was 1996 and the family had finally settled after 18 months of growing pains in their new ranch in Utah.

Terry and Gwen shared their chilling experiences with the local reporter that broke the story. 

Skinwalker Ranch Activity

Some of the experiences on Skinwalker Ranch were:

• Crop circles appearing out of thin air overnight.
• UFOs circling overhead like fireflies in a spring evening. The sky filled with unidentified saucers and shapes.
• Cattle mutilation. Systematic and repeated mutilation of their livestock. The animals pried open in an odd surgical and bloodless manner.

Three months after the story’s publication, Las Vegas real estate titan and UFO lover Robert Bigelow bought the property for $200,000.

Under the name of the National Institute for Discovery Science, the bigshot went all FBI on the property. Bigelow set up 24/7 surveillance of the ranch. His goal? Get proof of the supernatural on tape. 

The surveillance ultimately yielded a book, Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah. Not a lick of evidence was captured on film, but every researcher involved in the project claimed to have seen paranormal activity.

The ranch was resold to Adamantium Real Estate, which has since applied to trademark the name “Skinwalker Ranch.”

UFO Alley

The Uinta Basin of eastern Utah is one of the most spiritually heavy places in the world. Locals have deemed the region UFO Alley, and sightings of little green men and their UBERs are a dime a dozen. Enthusiast flock the place like moths to a flame, and it is a must pilgrimage for ET lovers

“You can’t throw a rock in Southern Utah without hitting somebody who’s been abducted,” local filmmaker Trent Harris told the Deseret News.

High Strangeness at the Ranch

Let’s list all the strange things that have happened within Skinwalker Ranch over the years. Odd and bizarre objects, UFOs, have been seen zooming overhead since recorded time.

In 1776, Franciscan missionary Silvestre Vélez de Escalante wrote about strange fireballs popping over his campfire in El Rey. Countless European explorations detailed numerous strange occurrences taking place in the region.

Before Conquistadors and eager Manifest Destiny Yanks, indigenous peoples that occupied the Uinta Basin passed down through oral retellings the horrible tales of the beings that occupied the area. Warning their children away from the region.

Mysterious large animals: in particular, a wolf three times the size of a normal lupine hunts the perimeter. Terry, while living at the ranch, even managed to shoot this creature multiple times with his rifle. But, the wooly beast merely shrugged the blows.

Colm Kelleher and co-author George Knapp of the aforementioned book, describe poltergeist activity, Bigfoot sightings, crop circles, cattle vivisection, glowing orbs, and even humanoid beings marching about in large groups. They saw or investigated evidence of close to 100 incidents.

The Kelleher Incident

On the night of March 12, 1997—after the ranch had been sold off—biochemist Colm Kelleher, working with Bigelow’s National Institute for Discovery Science, declared to have seen an immense humanoid being spying on the research team. The creature perched on a tree and spying on his crew. 

The large creature that lay motionless, almost casually, in the tree. The only indication of the beast’s presence was the penetrating yellow light of the unblinking eyes as they stared fixedly back into the light.

Frightened, Kelleher grabbed a rifle and fired at the creature. The being ran away. 

What Is a Skinwalker?

Skinwalkers, in Navajo tribal folklore, are, to put it bluntly, the big-bad they constantly feared. They are shapeshifting creatures that can manifest as all manner of animals.

Imagine a werewolf on steroids, with the cunning insight of Lex Luthor. Unlike other shapeshifters in the world, yee naaldlooshii or skinwalkers retain their intelligence.

They are savage, evil, and macabre beings that hunger for people’s suffering. They loath love, empathy, and compassion. Skinwalkers march the land they walk on and blacken the soul of whoever sees them.

They are vile creatures that partly, due to the Navajos traditions and secretive nature, few are aware off; The Navajo people never discuss them and mentioning them is considered a taboo subject.

Skinwalkers are, in tribal folklore, either evil witches/warlocks or eldritch beings from the time before man; beings that were cast-out, like fallen angels, when they sinned against the laws of nature and other benevolent spirits.

The name Skinwalker, used in the ranch’s greeting cards, comes from the repeated sightings of these human-like creatures. But, also, from the fact that Ute territory shares a border with the once burgeoning Navajo Nation. 

“It was not a friendly relationship. The Navajo were more aggressive people; they took slaves, they had Ute slaves. And there was direct conflict when the Navajo attempted to move up into Ute territory.”

• Historian Sondra Jones, author of Being and Becoming Ute.

While the Skinwalker didn’t show up in Ute religion, its narrative aspects, not to mention the animosity towards the warring Navajo, made it an ideal name for a land that seems cursed by all manner of ungodly horrors. 

Haunted Horrors Of The West

Skinwalker are the nastiest of the nasty in the Navajo culture and their very presence in a region seems to root that region’s soul and turn it bitter and cold. But many other dark, angry, and shadowy creatures hide in the dusty desert.

Take a walk with Denver Ghosts on a Denver ghost tour to discover the demons lurking within the Mile High City! Read our blog to get ready before that big day high above the clouds and as always follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok!

Source:

• https://allthatsinteresting.com/skinwalker
• https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/m7qb54/inside-skinwalker-ranch-a-paranormal-hotbed-of-ufo-research
• https://speakyourpieceutah.buzzsprout.com/774314/episodes/3648922-being-becoming-ute-a-conversation-with-ethnohistorian-dr-sondra-g-jones-season-1-ep-10-part-1