Skinwalker Ranch

The Sherman family purchased the property in 1994 and within weeks reported extraordinary phenomena: cattle mutilated with surgical precision, orbs of light moving through pastures, and a massive creature that absorbed gunshot wounds without injury. Their accounts drew the attention of Las Vegas businessman Robert Bigelow, who purchased the ranch in 1996 and established the National Institute for Discovery Science to investigate it.

The ranch gained renewed attention when investigative journalist George Knapp and physicist Colm Kelleher published Hunt for the Skinwalker (2005). Subsequent reporting revealed that the US Defense Intelligence Agency had funded research at the ranch through a classified programme. The property takes its name from the Skinwalker of Navajo tradition — a malevolent shape-shifting entity — and the Ute people have long considered this valley forbidden ground.