FROM LOS ALAMOS TO SKINWALKER RANCH
Retired US Army colonel JOHN B ALEXANDER has seen more than his fair share of anomalies. Here, he recalls his time with the National Instititute for Discovery Science and looks back at one of its most baffling cases – the outbreak of high strangeness on a
Retired US Army colonel JOHN B ALEXANDER has seen more than his fair share of anomalies. Here, he recalls his time with the National Instititute for Discovery Science and looks back at one of its most baffling cases – the outbreak of high strangeness on a Utah ranch...
The phone rang unexpectedly on a Sunday morning. A group of scientists was standing in the kitchen of our home in Santa Fe. Most of the weekend we had been discussing Zero Point Energy research and how best to proceed. At that moment, the issue was getting people back to Albuquerque to catch their flights. There was no way I could have known that the seemingly innocuous call would lead to some of my most amazing encounters with inexplicable phenomena. The events that followed would be real, but far outside current scientific understanding.
THE BORDERLANDS OF SCIENCE
The caller announced that he was Bob Bigelow. He had heard about me and asked if there were any projects that needed funding. Coincidence? Possibly, but how did it happen that a complete stranger would call asking about funding projects just as some of the leading scientists in the world had completed a discussion of the topic. Actually, I had encountered Bob once before. He had attended the MIT conference on abductions that was hosted by John Mack of Harvard and Dave Pritchard, an extraordinary optical physicist at MIT. I had given the presentation immediately following John Mack’s. That was a tough act to follow. The topic of my talk was on the possible relationship between UFO abductions and Near Death Experiences.
Having recently retired from Los Alamos National Laboratory, I was looking for new options and suggested to Bob that we get together. A short time later he flew over to Santa Fe, and as a result of that meeting he did fund a project of a friend of mine, Pharis Williams. “Willie,” as he was known, had been working on his Dynamic Theory for a long time and wanted to complete it. Bob also expressed interest in establishing an organisation to explore UFOs and the continuation of consciousness beyond death. I mentioned the Santa Fe Institute and their innovative approach to research. They were focused on chaos theory and attracted some of the best minds in the world.
There were reports of strange creatures being seen at the ranch
Intrigued, Bob indicated he might like to buy the Institute. While their research was superb, and processes for the crossfertilisation of ideas captivating, their leading light and co-founder was Murray Gell-Mann, a theoretical physicist and 1969 Nobel Laureate for his work on elementary particles. His book The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and the Complex had been published recently and had garnered a lot of public attention. Gell-Mann, however, was notoriously independent and a professor emeritus at the California Institute of Technology. Given Bob’s proclivities for tight control, that was not going to be a good fit.
A month later I agreed to join in the development of a new organisation that he chartered as the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS). It was located in Bob’s hometown, LasVegas, and close to his other offices. NIDS was not his first foray into supporting psi research. For a time, Angela Thompson had done work at the Bigelow Foundation, and Dean Radin was funded at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, for several years. But NIDS was the first free-standing, full-time organisation and would primarily focus on his two specific interests.
Having twice formally retired, I was hired part-time, and before long an experienced biochemist named Colm Kelleher was brought in as the deputy administrator to run the operation day-to-day. One of my early tasks was to help create a worldclass Science Advisory Board (SAB). Bob knew a few of the obvious choices, like JacquesVallee, Hal Puthoff, and lunar astronaut Edgar Mitchell. But because I came from the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), I had other contacts in the scientific community, ones who were not widely known to be interested in these phenomena. What emerged was truly an amazing group, one that could stand up to any scrutiny. It included GianCarlo Rota of MIT, who is considered the father of combinatorial mathematics, and O’Dean Judd, a physicist who had been the technical director of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, aka Star Wars) and later became the National Intelligence Officer for Research and Development at the National Intelligence Council. Also on the board was Johndale Solem, a brilliant theoretical physicist from LANL who held the Enrico Fermi chair and had published hundreds of peer-reviewed papers in different fields. It was Johndale who first proposed the use of nuclear weapons for planetary defence against asteroid impact. For that he was vociferously attacked in the NewYork
Times as just wanting to defend the nuclear weapons budget. Also an initial member of the NIDS SAB was another lunar astronaut, albeit a more sceptical one, Senator Harrison “Jack” Schmitt. Joining us later was Al Harrison, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, who studied how contact with extraterrestrials would impact society. There were several other scientists, most of whom had been openly involved in the scientific study of anomalous phenomena. While many fields of science were represented, the common factor was that they were all open-minded and willing to examine data that didn’t fit preconceived parameters.
The first chairman of the NIDS SAB was Christopher (Kit) Green, MD, PhD, a former CIA senior scientist and then a senior executive with General Motors. Later, Kit would head the fMRI research at Wayne State Medical Center, but he was already known for his interest in psi phenomena. With his multidisciplinary background and questioning mind, he was the perfect choice to head this group.
WOLVES, ORBS AND MUTILATIONS
For the six years I was associated with NIDS, I had an opportunity to engage in some fascinating studies. Of course, one stands out beyond all others: the events at what became known as Skinwalker Ranch ( see Ian Simmons, ‘Strangeness at Skinwalker Ranch’,
FT169:44-47). Bob and I flew toVernal, Utah, the day he closed the deal with Terry Sherman to buy the ranch. That was the first night I spent alone on the mesa overlooking the grazing land below. But other than an attack of voracious mosquitoes, there was nothing remarkable to report. Later, that was not the case – there were several incidents that would challenge any model of modern science. (For more complete information about this investigation, I recommend the book Hunt for the Skinwalker by Colm Kelleher and George Knapp.)
The term Skinwalker Ranch was coined by people not associated with the project. Skinwalker comes from the Navajo tradition and refers to an entity that can change form from a man into any animal, such as a wolf, coyote, fox, or even a bird. They are associated with witches and evil, as opposed to the medicine men who engage in blessings and healings. The term skinwalker was appropriate, as there were credible reports of strange creatures being seen at the ranch. It was reported to us that the local Indians were well aware of unusual happenings in the area, events that occurred long before it became a working ranch. By tradition, it was an area to be avoided, especially at night.
Based on these tales, it seemed like the acquisition of the ranch made sense as it offered a nearly unique opportunity to serve as a laboratory where phenomena occurred frequently. It would exceed our wildest expectations, but it must be emphasised that these spectacular events took place over a period of years. It was not as if something unusual happened every night.
The SAB listened to the remarkable, often fantastic stories that Terry Sherman told us. For the record, we found him to be very credible and a solid citizen who was perplexed by the events that happened to him and his family. The history of the ranch seemed to support his claims. When Terry and his family moved in, they found heavy metal rings embedded in the walls near the front and rear door of the tiny house. The prior owner indicated that he kept vicious dogs chained near the doors to prevent anyone or anything from approaching the house. Later we learned that he had also experienced a number of incidents that caused him to use that primitive but effective security measure.
One of the inexplicable stories that lends credence to the Skinwalker Ranch phenomena happened shortly after the family first moved in. While on a break from working close to the house, Terry noticed a dog approaching from the west. As the animal walked right up him, Terry realised it was a wolf and not a dog, as he’d first thought. The wolf was very large, its head coming to the middle of Terry’s chest. He thought it strange that a wolf had been domesticated and was friendly to humans. After petting the animal, Terry returned to work.
Within a few minutes, he heard a commotion in his cattle pen, which was located nearby. There, he found the wolf had reached under the bottom railing, grabbed a 600lb (272kg) calf by the snout, and was attempting to pull it out. Picking up a heavy wooden post, Terry smacked the wolf in the ribs as hard as he could. That had no effect. From his truck, Terry quickly retrieved his 44-Magnum. At point-blank range, he fired six rounds into the wolf’s chest. That should have killed any natural animal, yet barely fazed this one.
At that juncture, the wolf let go of the calf and began wandering off, but not in any hurry. Next Terry picked up a loaded rifle he used for elk hunting. He fired at the retreating animal and saw chunks of flesh