The Ranch

The Ranch, by Erick T. Rhetts, available on Amazon as an E-book and paperback

As the author of multiple titles based on the infamous Skinwalker Ranch in Utah, the topic of The Secrets of Skinwalker Ranch, a television series on The History Channel, and the ghostwriter of no less than four other titles, all for the same author, to say that I have an interest in the place is an understatement.

As informed as I am as to the Skinwalker Ranch and the unexplained events associated with the property and nearby surroundings, I yet remain lacking in the actual chronology of what it was that the Sherman family experienced on that property while living there.

Not that I am at a loss to list the individual events themselves. These have been well-documented in local newspapers at the time, including the Deseret News located in Vernal, which ran a series of related articles back at the end of the ’90s. Beyond these resources, all readily available to anyone willing to do a bit of research, I had access to the transcript of an actual interview provided by Mrs. Sherman.

But this transcript is pretty much all there is to go on. The Shermans, to date, have been extremely guarded as to their experience, unwilling to go public. They have no wish to open themselves to scorn or ridicule and wish to protect their children, now well into adulthood, from the attention.

When I set out to write The Ranch, I acknowledged to myself, and then later to the readers, that the result of the narrative would be speculative. That the events are actual and documented, the narrative developing and presenting a chronology, what happened and when and the details would be the product of my own logic and reason. I knew what happened. I know the layout of the ranch. I had a general idea of the order of events. I was familiar with which one of the family members experienced those events. I am familiar with the indigenous lore relevant to the events, the property and the Great Basin. And I was in possession of numerous other interview transcripts and narratives from neighbors, security personnel hired to protect the property, and details from other investigators.

It wasn’t until I was well into the process of writing, however, that I realized I was falling into the role of a remote viewer. If you are not familiar, a remote viewer–and there are actual people who are such–has the psychic ability to be in one place and time and transport themselves psychically to another place and time. In practice, the remote viewer is placed in a dark, isolated space, a small room, for example, given pencil and paper, and left alone. Through the psychic process, and informed with just enough information to work with, the remote viewer actually goes to the place upon which he or she is focused and sees the place and goings-on psychically. He or she then may draw figures, maps, scrawl phrases, and make notes. Granted, it is a far-fetched concept, but also readily researchable by any so interested, (See Russell Targ, Harold Puthoff, Stanford).

While I did not experience psychic views, I did find the events unfolding in a way that revealed probable truths. Why did the Shermans give up so readily on a life-long dream? Surely, a near 500-acre ranch blessed with the abundance of natural resources not easily found in Utah was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and the type of property to be handed down generation after generation?

The answer might be found in Mrs. Sherman’s own words when explaining why they sold the ranch to Robert Bigelow. She said, and I’m paraphrasing, the actual words available in one of the books for which I was the ghostwriter, she was reluctant to sell to a family that had young children. What did she mean? Was it the events that posed a risk? Possible, but I don’t think so. While the events were strange, odd, alien, unexplainable, none of them ever put any one at risk, other than, perhaps, the family dogs. But even then, no known autopsy or test was ever recorded verifying that the greasy substance found, supposedly the remains of the dogs, has ever surfaced.

Mrs. Sherman, I believe, was more concerned about the isolation of the property and the effect it was having on her children’s social well-being and development. As large as the property is and as removed its location from neighbors and towns, the opportunity to make friends and socialize surely were limited.

In addition, the occupation of ranching is not necessarily a lucrative one, requiring labor 24/7 and not lending itself to the hiring of many ranch hands, especially at the beginning stages. The loss of even a few head of cattle, regardless of method, is not easily absorbed financially. At some point, Mr. Sherman must have been feeling the pinch, even overwhelmed by the stress we all feel when confronted with the piling up of expenses. This would explain, then, why Mr. Bigelow’s offer, somewhere around $250k, seemed appropriate at the time, when clearly, even back in the late 90s, a property like that might have commanded significantly more.

So, while The Ranch is a speculative narrative, and not meant to be otherwise, the reasons why the Shermans sold the ranch and abandoned a life-long dream might not be the ones suggested by their experiences on the property, but ones more mundane.

Read The Ranch and draw your own conclusions.