Season 07 Episode 10: Into the Badlands (Pt.2 of 3)

the dashboard. Turning to look out the window, she is startled to see a large pair of eyes more black than blue, staring right back at her through the glass. It is a wolf, and it's almost as tall as the truck. It had been a few months since the Shermans had moved into their new ranch. After their strange encounter with the wolf on the first day, more wolves had since been seen loitering around the place. It was

almost as if they were stalking the family. Concerned for the live stock that is due to arrive in a matter of weeks, the family has no choice but to bring the matter up with the local tribal office who oversee the Uinta and Ourey reservation. It was there they

believed the wolves were coming from. The following day, after seeing the wolf by her car, Gwen makes the short trip to the reservation office in nearby Fort Duchane, but when she requests to speak to someone about the wolves running wild on her land, she has met only with

a bemused silence. An official politely informs Gwen that no such animals live on the reservation, As they explain, not only would they not be kept as pets, but wolves have not been indigenous to the region since the nineteen thirties, when they have been slaughtered as part of a national extermination campaign. The Sherman's cattle arrives in mid November forty odd black cimental heifers, along with four prized bulls. The family is also joined by three blue healers, expert cattle

herding dogs. One evening, Terry is out looking for stray cows with his son and his nephew when he spots a set of headlights from what appears to be a truck parked up about half a mile to the west. Assuming it to be trespasses, the three of them set off towards the vehicle, but as they draw near it starts to move away from them. Terry breaks into a jog to keep up with it. But there's something strange

about what he's chasing. An ordinary truck would be bumping up and down over the rugged terrain, while the beams of its headlights would also bounce up and down accordingly, and yet the lights on this vehicle stay perfectly set in one position. Eventually, with no place to go, the vehicle comes to a stop opposite a thick clump of trees bordering the western edge of the ranch. While Terry, his son, and his nephew take a moment to catch

their breath, something extraordinary is said to have happened. The vehicle, which they can now see is cuboid in shape and no longer than five feet in length, appears to lift straight up from the ground. Moments later, it clears the tallest of the cottonwoods, flashing red and white lights underneath as it turned smoothly and silently before flying off into

the night. When Terry relays this story to Gwen later that night, he is surprised to hear that she has also been seeing strange things, other flying objects, black and triangular in shape, that seemed to follow her truck down the entrance drive, as well as vehicles parked up in the fields that suddenly disappear. After seeing one vehicle vanish in front of her eyes, she trekked out to the

spot where she believed it had been parked. At first, she saw no evidence of anything having been there at all, until she spotted what looked like footprints in the dirt, only they were twice the size of any foot she'd ever seen. A few weeks later, one night, Terry spots a weird golden orb in the sky just above the trees to the western end of the branch. When it's still there a few days later, Terry once again finds

himself staring up at it in amusement. When it suddenly expanded in size, Terry could not believe what he was seeing. With the orb now much bigger, there appeared to be something inside it, or rather through it. As Terry later said, it was as if he could see a whole other landscape bathed in sunlight, as if he were looking through a window in the sky to another world where it was currently time. Then a black object seemed to fly out of it, but he lost sight of it shortly after,

though undoubtedly strange. The family are reluctant to draw any wild conclusions from the peculiar events. They speculate that the most likely explanation is that some kind of military experiments are going on. In any case, these oddities are soon forgotten when a bitter winter draws in that by the turn of the new year has claimed the lives of

two of their herd. By the time spring arrives, three more of the sherman's cattle succumb to the harsh conditions, and all memory of strange flying objects and gigantic wolves has long been forgotten. But all that is about to change. Terry is rounding up cattle when he hears his son Tease cries. He arrives to find him wretching by the banks of the canal behind the ranch and pointing to

a spot for Terry to go and investigate. Moments later, as a torrential rain starts to lash down, Terry is waist deep in the canal, tying a thick rope around a dead heifer's back legs. Together with Terry's horse, he and his son are the animal from the water. Terry sinks to the ground, exhausted as the rain streams down his face. On the ground before him lies the heifer minus its rear end, which appears to have been completely removed with surgical precision. The cow's insides are also gone,

but there is no sign of blood anywhere. Perhaps one of the wolves says tea. But Terry isn't so sure. No, he thinks this is something else, entirely something he has never seen before. It'll prove to be only the first of many bizarre cattle mutilations that will plague Terry and Gwen over the next few months. Towards the end of April nineteen ninety six, Terry is sitting outside the ranch one evening after another grueling day, basking in a warm sunset,

with his three trusted blue Healers by his side. At some point, one of the dogs begins to growl, causing him to sit up in his chair. It must have been several hundred yards away and roughly about the size of a tennis ball. It looks as if it were made entirely from blue electrical sparks. Dogs barking manically, Terry gives them a nod, at which point they tear off

instantly in pursuit of the strange blue orb. Terry soon grows concerned, however, when the dogs chase the thing to the edge of a copse before following it into the trees and disappearing into the undergrowth. When Terry heads back inside later that evening, he reassures the children that the dogs will find their way back home. The following morning, the heelers have not returned, so Terry heads out to

find them. Stepping through the trees where he'd seen them last, he detects a distinct smell of burnt flesh mingling with the morning dew and sage brush. Pushing through to a clearing beyond, Terry soon discovers, to his horror the source of the smell three circles of dried grass, each with their own gooey mess piled up on top the remains

of his dogs. The loss of the much loved dogs is devastating for Terry and the rest of the family, who are beginning to feel increasingly terrorized by the weird events. For the first time, Terry is thoroughly rattled and worried for his family's safety. With no one else to talk to, he seeks help from local resident Junior Hicks, who introduced himself to the family a few months previously after first hearing about the strange events taking place on their ranch.

Hicks is a retired high school science teacher from the nearby town of Roosevelt. Hicks has spent a lifetime trying to convince people that there's something peculiar happening around the Uinta Basin, but even he isn't sure what to make of the recent happenings at what is now the Sherman Ranch. IX's fascination with the area stems mostly from a number of local sightings of UFOs in the early nineteen fifties.

In particular, a sighting recorded in nineteen fifty two by a Navy warrant officer named Delbert new House that took place near Tremont and Utah, just to the north of Salt Lake City. While driving through Utah on their way to vacation in Portland, Oregon, new House and his wife Norma, along with their son Delbert, and daughter Anne, spotted twelve saucer shaped objects identical in size flying in the air

above their car. New House estimated the objects to be similar in size to B twenty nine bomber planes if they'd been flying at ten thousand feet. After watching them for a short time, new House grabbed his film camera from the boot of his car and proceeded to record the objects for a number of minutes. The footage he captured remains to this day one of the most compelling

in the animals of eupology. For Terry, being able to talk openly with Hicks without any fear of judgment was a welcome relief, But what Hicks would later tell him after they'd inspected the remains of the dogs together, was far from reassuring. Hicks had documented over four hundred cases of strange sightings within the Uinta region alone, ranging from balls of electricity to black triangular objects flying overhead just like what Gwen had seen, and this isn't the first

time that strange things had occurred on the ranch. According to Hicks, the former owner, Edith Myers, spoke regularly of bizarre goings on at the homestead whenever she ventured into town. Hicks himself, who claimed to have worked at the ranch carrying out small jobs for Edith, had also noticed little oddities occurring there, such as compasses behaving irregularly. Hicks has a number of theories for what might be going on, but there is one in particular that proves especially unsettling

to the Shermans. One afternoon, Junior Hicks brings round a map of the local region to the Sherman's home. After spreading it out in front of Terry, he picks out the position of the Sherman Rah, noting how it seems unnaturally snipped out of the surrounding Uinta and Ouay reservation.

It wouldn't be the first time a piece of land had been confiscated from indigenous communities and sold off, but the Sherman ranch is a decidedly different proposition, since the local Native American Noutche community, as Hicks explains, had never wanted anything to do with it in the first place. While the Noutche were being pressed on each side by newcomers hungry for the land they occupied, they were forced to enter into a series of strategic alliances in the

last bid for survival. One such alliance came at a bloody cost for the neighboring Dinae people later named Navajo by settlers from Spain in retaliation, So the story goes, one night, the Dnae medicine men gathered under the cover of darkness, and, while illuminated by the flickering flames of a ritual fire, danced and chanted a curse upon the Nutche and their land. Ever since, the tribe have considered

themselves haunted by the embodiment of this curse. Terrifying shape shifting witches they call ye now de Luchi, otherwise known as skin walkers. The skin walker of Dnay folklore exists only to bring death or ill harm to any who come across it. They like to take a non human form, most often as a coyote or a wolf. Once changed, it will start to seek out its prey, stalking them at night and occasionally sprinkling the dust of ground children's

bones into their victims' homes to cause sickness. According to Junior Hicks, the local Noutche considered the entirety of the table top ridge at the north end of the Sherman's Ranch to be part of the skin walker's domain, and as such were terrified to go anywhere near it. In fact, the ridge is even known locally as Skinwalker Ridge. There is one place, in particular, according to Hicks, that is especially feared, a place called Dark Canyon, located just over

thirty miles to the north of the ranch. It is thought that many of the ancient petroglyphs prehistoric rock drawings found within the canyon are in fact depictions of these terrifying creatures. It is also there that some belief new skin walkers are created, where tribal which dressed in masks and beads, gather in caves lined with human heads, singing discordant songs around rising fires as they draw pictures in the dirt, before spitting and defecating on their markings as

they summon another skin walker into existence. Junior Hicks also explained to the Shermans that to the Noute, the sighting of a wolf or a dog in strange circumstances was evidence enough that they had seen a skin walker, and any such sighting was deemed a portent of immediate danger to their families. Terry thought back uneasily to that early encounter with the wolf that would not be killed, and the time a huge wolf like creature had approached Gwen's trial.

Although Terry tried to ignore Hick's warnings, there was no ignoring the number of dead and mutilated cattle that continued to mount up and the effect it was all having on the family's mental health, not to mention finances. The final straw comes late one evening in July. After the family settles down for the night, Terry notices the lights in the yard are flickering on and off. Then the

inside lights start to dim and flicker too. Seconds later, Gwen lets out a horrifying scream when she catches sight of another orb gently hovering around the homestead, lingering by the window as if it's watching them. Moments later it has gone, but the Shermans have had enough. By the end of that summer in nineteen ninety six, they have lost a total of fourteen cattle in two years, and the stress of it all was exerting a heavy toll.

Gwen is on the verge of losing her job at the local bank due to all the sleepless nights and missed hours, and the children's grades at school are suffering too. In the end, the Shermans decide it is time to sell. They are just in the process of putting the ranch up for sale when they receive a phone call from someone in Las Vegas calling on behalf of a man named Robert Bigelow. As the caller explains. A few days earlier, Bigelow had been alerted to an article in Utah's Desert

News about the weird happenings at the Sherman Ranch. Without even wishing to view the property, Bigelow is willing to make an immediate offer of two hundred thousand dollars to take the ranch off their hands. The sh Germans don't think twice. When Robert Bigelow was a young boy, he listened with astonishment as his grandparents recounted a story in matter of fact terms about the time an alien spacecraft had onced buzzed their car as they made their way

down a country road just outside of Las Vegas. The craft had apparently shot off at an acute angle and disappeared into the distance before they were able to get a proper look at it. Later, Bigelow became a multi millionaire through his hospitality company Budget Suites of America, but the wonder of hearing his grandparents' story had never left him. In the early nineteen nineties, with significant financial means, Bigelow began funding a series of fringe science projects through the

University of Nevada in Las Vegas. The programs were designed to cover a wide area of study, investigating various phenomena such as near death experiences, altered states of consciousness, and extrasensory perception. By nineteen ninety six, he was ready to

take his fascination to another level. Colin Kelleher was a bright young biochemist working at the National Jewish Center for Immunology in Denver when he came across a job recruitment ad in science placed by something calling itself the National Institute for Discovery Science, or NIDS. The institute, set up by Robert Bigelow, sought to bring together PhD level scientists

from across the scienceic spectrum to investigate paranormal phenomena. It listed as its remit the modest intention to study the origin and evolution of consciousness in the universe. Kellerher was instantly hooked and without hesitation, applied for the job. A few weeks later, he is on a plane to Las Vegas to take up his new role as an NIDS research manager. On his arrival in Vegas, Kelleher finds Bigelow to be an engaging, intelligent, and ambitious character who is

genuinely and deeply committed to the organization's goals. This commitment is echoed loudly by the team of personnel so far brought to the table, including two of the only twelve humans ever to have walked on the Moon, doctor Harrison Schmidt and doctor Edgar Mitchell. Alongside them is retired US Army Colonel John Alexander, a Special Forces eighteen commander during the American Vietnamese War. Alexander had become a controversial figure due to his interest in non lethal defense and the

potential of mind control in warfare. With the newly assembled NIDS team eager to get out into the field to put their investigative skills to the test, Bigelow suggests the Sherman Ranch as their first case study, and in September

nineteen ninety six they move onto their new homestead. A huge observation trailer is installed opposite the ranch house and loaded with all the latters tech to conduct their investigations, including spectrum and frequency analyzers and recording equipment utilizing the latest in seedy rome based storage. A bank of monitors is assembled, piled up alongside boxes of magnetometers and Geiger counters, useful for recording any radioactive discharges that might be taking place.

Despite their eagerness to leave the property, Terry and Gwen had not been entirely ready to give in. They'd taken it as a personal affront that the family was effectively run off their land and arranged a deal with Bigelow to not only keep cattle on the ranch, but also to assist the n I d. S Team as property managers of what would henceforth be known as Bigelow Ranch. When the team arrives, Terry takes Column, Kelleher and the others on a tour of the property to get a

sense of what exactly they are up against. As they walk, the team listens enrapt as Terry recounts the events of the past few years. On that bright September day, As the chirrup of crickets mixes with the lowing of distant cattle and a warm breeze drifts over the pastures, it isn't hard to see why the Shermans had resisted leaving for so long. Moments later, Terry, Kelleher and another colleague are staring down at the putrid carcass of a cow, one of two from the farm next door that had

died in the last few days from mysterious circumstances. The next day, Bigelow's team begin by compiling witness testimonies from the neighboring ranch families and reservation residents, which, over the following months reveal a startling number of bizarre and inexplicable experiences that have occurred over the years. In tandem with these reports, in the day, the team take electromagnetic readings

and test the land for levels of radiation. Come the night, they take it in turns to sit under the stars and gaze up at the sky in the hope of spotting anything unusual. By December, the snows arrive, and as the temperature continues to drop, Terry moves most of the cattle to the family's new ranch, located twenty or so miles away. Column Kelliher and the rest of the NIDS team bring the first age of their investigations to a

close and return back to their Las Vegas headquarters. In February, the cattle return to the Bigelow ranch two weeks later, Terry is tagging some of the new arrivals. Having singled one out, he quickly grabs it by the head and wrestles it to the ground. Its mother watches nervously as Terry punches the first tag quickly through its ear. Terry waits for the calf to settle down again, then takes the other ear and swiftly punches in a second tag.

The calf is released in a flurry of jerking movements, trying to shake off the pain as it stumbles back to the safety of its mother. A short time later, Terry and Gwen are inspecting the rest of their animals when an anxious barking catches their attention. One of their heelers appears to have spotted something on the edge of the field. It wanders off to investigate and is soon yapping at something in the undergrowth. Then, without warning, she

sprints off into the scrub. Moments later, a strange cry comes within the herd. It is happening again. Terry runs to the mother whose calf he'd just tagged, but there is no sign of the younger animal until he notices the small leg bone, freshly shorn of meat, lying on the ground before him. Taking a few more steps, Terry comes across the rest of the butchered carcass. It is laid out on the grass with its legs splayed, its organs have been ripped from the inside and its hide

almost completely removed, exposing the ribs underneath. One of its ears has also been sliced off, but there isn't a speck of blood in sight. Terry steps back in shock, then calls out for Gwen. Five hours later, having flown straight up from Vegas, doctor Colin Kelleher, along with the physicist and veterinarian from the NIDS team, are standing over the remains. The three men swiftly get to work fishing for magnetic and radioactive anomalies, anxiously eyeing the edges of

the pasture as the machines bleep and hiss. It is clear from the way the animals are huddled together that something out there is watching them, and it's making the men nervous. Looking closely at the calf's ear, the vet remarks on the precision of the cut, and when the autopsy is finished, it is clear that if the culprit is an animal, it isn't something that any of them

have ever seen before. On the edge of the herd, the calf's mother lowers her head and sniffs at the ground as she waits for the child that will never return. For Gwen and Terry. It is yet an another animal loss to the high strangeness, and despite all the combined credentials of Bigelow's investigative team, no one can explain it and things are about to get even more terrifying. You've been listening to Unexplained Season seven, episode ten, Into the Badlands,

Part two of three. Part three will be released next Friday, November twenty fourth. This episode was written by Richard McLain Smith. Unexplained. The book and audiobook, with stories never before featured on the show, is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, and other bookstores.

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