Brendan Jesus
Before we get into this week’s episode of Mystery at Blind Frog Ranch, I’ll be frank with you, I’ve never understood algorithms. You like a few photos of furries on Twitter and somehow you’re served countless photos of furries strewn between UAP/UFO news. (The furries thing is a joke, but I still don’t understand how algorithms work.) I somehow spent myriad hours cultivating my Twitter thread to show me horror and UAP-related content. Here’s a Longlegs poster from Creepy Duck Designs. Now look at this video of Lue Elizondo lying to Glenn Beck’s face. Enjoy this fan edit of Dr. Lawrence Gordon and Adam Stanheight lovingly gazing across the dirty Saw bathroom at each other while Charlie XCX plays in the background. Now read this thread of Steven Greenstreet, Joe Muriga, or The Average Chris debating with skeptics and believers on whether or not Lue Elizondo is lying to the American public. (Sorry to keep bringing Lue up, but UFOTwitter is still not past the former #1 best-selling Imminent.)
Over the past week or so, UFOTwitter has become a minefield for the skeptics and the believers. Personal attacks, death threats, mud-slinging, you name it. UFOTwitter has become unbearable. Don’t even get me started on when Donald Trump recently revealed, to Lex Fridman, that he would disclose the truth about UAPs “when” he is re-elected. It’s even gotten to the point where Lue Elizondo talked on Jeremy McGowan’s good name. Whether you agree with McGowan or not, he’s been clear on his stance and hasn’t once faltered.
UFOTwitter is now a frustrating cesspool of purposeful disinformation from both sides. The only good thing to come from UFOTwitter in the past week was learning the fact that former AAWSAP Director Jay Stratton and Dr. Travis Taylor have a band called Hitchhiker (a reference to the Hitchhiker Effect, a phenomenon discussed early on in the run of The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch). Recently, Jay and Travis were filmed at Phenomecon (it’s exactly what it sounds like) covering AC/DC’s Highway to Hell. Stratton gleefully strums away on the guitar, while Travis, who is wearing a tight black t-shirt that says “Bat Shit Crazy” belts to his heart’s content. (And take a peak at his bulging biceps ready to burst out of that shirt!) That video is the only good thing to come out of UFOTwitter in a long time.
It gets to the point where I question why I continue interacting with UFOTwitter just to keep them on my timeline. And then I’m graced with Travis and his biceps living his best life. That’s what social media is for.
Author’s Note: as writing this coverage it came to light that Hitchhiker revealed an original song titled Freckles on Her Butt (She’s Pretty) written by Dr. Travis Taylor. You have to listen to it.
Now that you’re all caught up with what’s going on over there, it’s time to head deep into the Uinta Basin and join Duane Ollinger and his team as they continue their search for…the Mystery at Blind Frog Ranch.
Rhoade Hard and Put Away Wet
Season 1 Episode 5 “Trespassers” starts at the Miner’s Shack. The first few minutes are a rehash of the information Charlie Boy learned in “Someone Was Here” a la the information of a Rhoades family member signing digging rights on the Blind Frog Ranch property. Geologist Eric Drummond interjects and says legend usually is founded in some sort of truth. He also reiterates something from earlier in the season, which is that he’s not chasing treasure, but he has to follow the clues when they point that way. From Chad Ollinger finding the wooden box in the deep-water cave, Charlie Boy’s information regarding the Rhoades family, and the information Eric is set to bring to the table, all signs point toward treasure.
The next day, Eric embarks into the hills with a topographical satellite image of the ranch. He talks about how, as a geologist, he can read rocks and rock formations, and through investigation, it’s possible to interpret where openings in the foundation can exist. After examining the map for a period of time, he notices he is standing on a fault in the rocks that isn’t shown on the map.
Duane, Chad, and Eric jump in some all-terrain vehicles (not ATVs though). They head out to one of the outcropped spots on the unmapped fault. This fault leads directly to the two miles of underwater caverns. Duane decides they want to get the drill out to this new location to see if they can find any evidence of undiscovered caves. Chad heads out to get the drill. Eric also throws out there that, geologically, caverns are known to exist on fault lines.
Could any of this lead to the Lost Rhoades Mine? Chad comes back with the boring machine, while Charlie Boy and Duane arrive with an 800-gallon water truck.
The Drilling Never Stops!
It might seem counter-productive to complain about the endless drilling during Season 5 of The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch and not the drilling of Mystery at Blind Frog Ranch. But I would argue the evidence found on Blind Frog Ranch is more profound and exciting than spending an entire season trying to drill a singular hole.
Chad starts up the boring drill after Duane fills up the drill’s water tank. The drilling hits a snail’s pace soon after it’s started when the drill bit hits bedrock. Duane tells Chad to slow down and take his time so the drill doesn’t break. That’s when all of the resistance releases from the drill. Now, the drill bit goes through the ground like butter. Everyone is gleeful with the thought of breaking into the void of a cavern. Suddenly, the pressure pump on the drill blows.
As Duane and Chad work on fixing the drill, Charlie Boy takes his metal detector and walks around the new drill site. Charlie Boy gets a hit on the metal detector just 40 feet away from the drill. It’s a strong hit, too! But every vice has its versa. Eric and Chad run over with shovels and feverishly dig up the spot Charlie Boy noted. What’s this large metal pipe doing in the ground… oh wait. It turns out, the drill head bounced off the bedrock and never broke through. They’ve been drilling through soft dirt. This news is hard for them to hear, but nothing will stop them from pushing forward in their investigation.
Chad jumps in his plane and flies around the ranch to blow off some steam. Duane has a macabre chuckle about this, but notes that since winter is coming, they need to put their nose to the grindstone.
Bring Out The GPR
Nathan Rasnick, of GPR Data, arrives at the Miner’s Shack. Duane says he wanted GPR Data here to do more sophisticated scans of the property to hopefully find new drill spots. If you remember from The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, GPR is ground penetrating radar that scans around 50 to 60 feet below ground. This is used to find voids, metal objects, electrical currents, and much more. Nathan will check out three different spots that were selected by Eric earlier when he was walking around with his topographical satellite map.
They all head out to the first spot, which is near the outcropping that Chad used the boring machine on earlier in the episode. One of these locations is near a rather large rock formation. When Nathan starts his scanning, he quickly gets strong feedback. His first assumption is that something would only give feedback this strong if it was highly reflective. He also notes that feedback like this is something he would expect to see in a city with underground infrastructure and not something you’d expect over sandstone bedrock.
Night starts to fall as Nathan and his team continue running the GPR. Nathan goes on to say this high-amplitude reflection he is seeing doesn’t look like a void. It looks like a steel plate that’s about four feet long.
Duane, Chad, Charlie Boy, and Eric head out to that spot the next day when the sunrises. When they arrive, they immediately start digging. They get a few feet into the ground but don’t find anything where they think this supposed steel plate-like object should have been. Eric grabs his metal detector and moves it all around the hole they have dug, only to come up empty-handed.
That’s when they notice a drone watching them.
There’s Someone In Them Hills
One of the producers points out the drone watching them and confirms it is not one of their production drones. The camera team scrambles to get their drone up in the air. As they release their drone, trouble strikes. Some form of electronic interference swiftly attacks the production team’s drone and it harshly falls out of the sky. That’s when one of the producers tells Duane there is someone on the property with a four-wheeler.
Duane, Chad, and Charlie Boy hop in some all-terrain vehicles (again, not ATVs or Side-by-Sides), and speed off. They soon come upon an older man, whose face is blurred. Duane asks what he is doing on this property and the trespasser says he has a grazing permit and that he is here looking for cattle. Duane tells him that his cattle is not on this property and he needs to leave. The trespasser says he’ll call the BLM manager (not sure what that is but presumably it’s the Bureau of Land Management). He also tells Duane he has it on good authority that his cattle fell into a hole in the ground. Duane, and myself, think this is bunk—and it’s weirder when the trespasser makes a note of the necklace Duane is wearing (which we’ll get to later).
“In Texas, if you’re downwind and something smells like a skunk and looks like one, it’s a f*cking skunk.” – Duane Ollinger
The trespasser leaves but is back on the property a few minutes later. The team intercepts him again and the trespasser starts taking photos of the land, Duane, and the production crew. He keeps negging Duane and asking why there’s a camera crew on the property. We see a side of Duane we’ve never seen before. Gone are his Jeff Bridges mannerisms and overall optimism. Duane, quietly, tells the trespasser “I don’t play those games.” And then forces him to delete the photos!
As night falls, Charlie Boy takes to the woods. He decides it would be in their best interest to rearrange some trail cameras and add some new ones. One of the locations he decides to set up some cameras is at a chokepoint near the south of the property where waters converge—if you were entering the property from this side, you’d be forced through the chokepoint. Charlie Boy also says the issue here is that the folklore of Skinwalker Ranch draws people to this property, even if it’s roughly 20 miles away from the other ranch. This moment with Charlie Boy ends with him reminding everyone that they need to stay vigilant and when they’re out here at night… they’re the prey.
Dirty Metal
This is where things go way over my head. I am no metallurgist, so everything from here on out is me taking Geologist Eric Drummond at face value.
Duane regales Eric with a tale of metals on this property made from dirt, this takes place in a spot on the ranch referred to as the Energy Zone. This piques Eric’s interest. The sun goes down and they decide to show Eric what they mean. Duane grabs some dirt from the Energy Zone. He sieves the dirt and puts it in a crucible. The crucible is placed in heat, turning the dirt into a molten pile of orange goo. At this point, Eric says he is expecting the molten dirt to turn into glass of some sort.
Duane removes the molten dirt-filled crucible from the heat source and pours it into a triangular-shaped mold. Then, they let it rest. After some time, Duane turns the mold over and a metal-like object falls from it. Eric is legitimately at a loss for words. When he does muster up something to say, it’s simply, “I don’t see how that can happen.”
The next day, Eric goes back to the Energy Zone with Chad. We get a better look at this new object, and it’s a shiny rock-like triangular object. Eric decides he’s going to run some tests on it. He crushes up the object with a hammer. When Chad asks him what he’s looking for in this sample, Eric says he’s expecting to see glass in the sample. This makes sense because I do know glass is made of sand (and in Minecraft when you put sand in the furnace it turns into glass).
Eric puts some of the sample dust under a microscope and is surprised to see individual particles of metal. Chad pulls out an XRF Gun, which reveals, when pointed at a sample, the individual materials an object is made of. After Chad tests the sample, Eric is taken aback, again. Eric points out anomalies in the data. There are elements in the data that have no good cause or reason to be in the metal-like object.
Back at the Miner’s Shack, Eric has a frank conversation with Duane. Eric reveals silver in the sample. He also says that he doesn’t believe in alchemy… but…(full stop). From here, Eric tells Duane he wants to take 12 samples from across the ranch and send them to a lab for testing. While Duane is fine with this, the idea of silver on the ranch doesn’t appeal to him at all. Duane, in a talking head, says silver is nowhere near as valuable as gold, so who really cares if there is silver here? Then… things get weirder.
Charlie Boy interrupts them. On one of the trail cameras, we see someone whose arms bend back while their chest points toward the sky. It looks like they’re possessed. An odd noise comes out of their mouth. Charlie Boy straight-up says it’s a skinwalker. Chad watches the video and realizes this camera is right next to where his family is camped out at. Freaking out, Chad jumps in a vehicle and speeds off. This visual image is one of the most haunting things I’ve ever seen.
Final Thoughts
My initial thought is, what happened to the large dry entrance they found in Episode 4 “Someone Was Here”? From what I remember, no one said the cave came to an end. So why are they not looking into that cave? The whole metal thing blew my mind, but there’s probably something related to heating sandstone up to a certain temperature that turns it into something like that. Who knows. Eric is blown away by it and that’s what matters to me.
This whole skinwalker thing at the end of the episode? Well, that’s a whole other issue. I hope there will be a good payoff to whatever this is.
