Brendan Jesus
There will be no author’s note this time. When I say I haven’t interacted with UFOTwitter in over a week I mean it! I’ve been so insanely busy and haven’t spent much time doom scrolling through multiple arguments and threads. I did spend about $250 at Arrow Video, though. If that means anything.
Anyway, let’s jump right into this frantic and fast-paced mid-season episode of Mystery at Blind Frog Ranch!
Where We Left Off
We start the episode by joining Duane Ollinger, Chad Ollinger, and Eric Drummond at the Miner’s Shack. They rehash everything from the finale of Season 2 Episode 4 “What’s Inside the Box?” regarding the Gallium. They head over to Charlie Boy and Jamie Dube in the trailer. They’re dead center in a bout of gale-force winds. The three men fill Charlie Boy and Jamie in on the Gallium findings.
The next day, we join all five members at the Miner’s Shack where they rehash everything we’ve learned about the Gallium…again. Duane says (again) they need to find a dry entrance. Eric has some tools that will help them out with this and he says he’s going to, “talk to the rocks.”
Talking Rocks
Eric sets up the rocks from the underwater cavern on a table. One of the first things he mentions is the sucrosic texture of the rocks. This is extra peculiar since none of the other rocks in this area have a similar texture. Eric’s next plan of attack is to check the rocks for radiation of any sort. While rocks may be extremely hard, they are also porous. The tiny pores in the rocks pick up things from their environments.
Eric pulls out a Geiger counter and checks the rocks for radiation. Quartzite rocks don’t naturally have radioactive properties so if a rock is found to be radioactive then there is something within the cave that is causing it. He checks a few of the rocks and doesn’t have any hits…until he does.
Eric radios Duane to come over to give him the good news. Once there, Eric shows Duane the rock with a tiny radioactive hit. He tells Duane of the correlation between radioactive rocks and dry entrances. At that point, Chad and Charlie Boy show up. Eric informs them of the radiation and what it could possibly mean regarding a dry entrance for the caves. With the hopes of finding a proper radiation spike, Eric plans to have a drone sent into the air with a Geiger counter affixed to it.
There’s a drastic cut with the next scene and none of this is properly explained. But Chad is at a location on the ranch, filming someone with his phone. Duane, and the camera crew, show up. It’s two men standing next to a pickup truck with handguns on their hips. Duane hops out of the car and he’s already dialed up to an 11. They say they’re suing Duane and serve him with papers. This person also tells Duane he’s the new co-owner of the ranch? Duane keeps goading the guy to pull his gun and then says, in a talking head, that he’s a freeloader. He also says that the mystery man isn’t part owner.
Knowing what I know behind the scenes, and why Season 4 is in limbo, it makes sense. Though for casual viewers this could seem completely out of left field. Apparently, Duane owns this land with a few other people (or maybe with one other person). And the reason we haven’t gotten any news regarding Season 4 is because there is indeed a land ownership dispute. Anyway, that scene ends.
Helicopter Helicopter
Charlie Boy, Duane, and Jamie are hanging at the Miner’s Shack. They’re discussing putting a fence up on the property since there have been multiple trespassers on the property. Suddenly, four Apache Attack Helicopters fly overhead. And they’re flying LOW. Charlie Boy says he has friends in the military and he’s sure it was a decoy—that when four helicopters fly that low in such a pattern it’s actually a distraction for something that’s happening a mile or two away.
That’s when they’re called over by the production team. Their video village has been absolutely ransacked! It’s clear an animal didn’t do it because the location of where the food was was left completely untouched. This paints the camera from the ridgeline in a whole new light. It’s been unclear whether or not the camera was government-related or not but now that government Apache helicopters are flying around at the same time as the ransackings it seems crystal clear!
Setting Up Something
I didn’t initially take notes on this scene but in hindsight went back and jotted it down. It seems like the minor introduction to Dave Miller (in Season 2 Episode 2 “Aztec or Not?”) has come back to be a more important subplot. Jamie meets up with Duane and Chad at a gas station in town. Jamie, who is hysterically wearing a long trench coat, shorts, and boots, tells them about Dave. It turns out that Dave gave Jamie the contact number of someone who used to work security at Skinwalker Ranch during the Bigelow era. (It’s not actually said it was the Bigelow era but Dave does say a long time ago.)
In the flashback we see of Jamie and Dave, Dave goes on to make a note that Jamie should not tell this person (or anyone) how he got the phone number. Hahahaha! It’s a TV show dude, come on.
Eye(s) In The Sky
Chad mentions that he hasn’t done an aerial survey in quite some time, so he plans to rectify that. He jumps in a Cessna 182 and takes to the sky.
At the Miner’s Shack, Duane, Eric, and Charlie Boy get the drone set up for the Geiger reading. They plan to fly it along the faults to look for radiation spikes. Eric mentions something called the Auger Effect which, basically, means radioactivity is amplified by gold. Significant amounts of surface radioactivity could indicate large gold deposits underneath the ground.
They get the drone up in the air and start scanning. The first few minutes don’t provide much but then they get a huge spike. And then another. And another. They’ve hit a radioactive jackpot! While this is going on, Chad notices a large opening in one of the rock faces which he makes note of for later.
All four men meet up and discuss the next steps. Chad and Charlie Boy are going to go look around for that hole while Duane and Eric are going to go map out those radiation-spiked areas.
Duane and Eric drive out to where they plotted the spikes and start investigating. When they arrive, Eric pulls out a Geiger counter and a gravity meter. The simple explanation of the gravity meter is that it can tell the differences between dense soil, rock, and open air. (There’s really no great explanation given for it.) They set up the gravity meter and got an initial hit of 25.3. Their second setup gives them a 16. Eric seems happy with this information…but it doesn’t go further than that. And the scene just kind of ends.
Later that day, Eric is driving out of the ranch as Jamie is entering. They stop in their respective trucks and chat. Jamie mentions to Eric what Dave Miller showed him during their meeting. If you remember, there was an insignia at that location from where a previous NASA bunker was set up which tested and searched for gravitational anomalies. There’s an odd disconnect here somewhere because what Jamie is talking about and what Eric is searching for are two completely different things. It seems like Jamie heard “gravity meter” and incorrectly correlated that with what Dave told him. Eric must have been in a hurry because he didn’t bother to correct him.
We end the episode by joining Chad and Charlie Boy as they search for the hole seen by Chad from the Cessna. After some searching, they arrive at the hole. Unfortunately, the hole is shallow. But not all hope is lost. Charlie Boy notices what seems like a fire pit with some sort of slag in it. (Slag is a stone-like waste that is left over from smelting and refining ore.) The inside of the hole has incredibly charred walls.
The episode ends with Charlie Boy questioning what this fire pit is for and leaves the audience with a burning question: was it used for smelting?
Final Thoughts
Firstly, the trespassers/lawsuit. Why would they make this serving-of-the-lawsuit bit seem more or less insidious than it actually is? It seems like forced storytelling. If they had been open and forthright about what is actually going on, then it would be easier to milk it for screen time. If anything has credence here, it would be excellent to sow seeds of doubt in everything and would amplify the story tenfold.
Secondly, the helicopters/ransacking. Could the helicopters have been flying low enough to cause the production tent to look like this? Or could it have been from the insane windstorm we witnessed at the beginning of the episode? OR could government entities of some sort be at fault?
Thirdly, why did they pique our interest with these radiation/gravity bits and then completely cut off the scene mid-investigation? Surely they could have forgone one of the 20 times they rehashed the same information to give us a few more minutes with Eric and Duane looking for gravity meter measurements.
Oh well. All I know is, there’s something weird going on. And all I hope is they eventually get to the bottom of the Mystery at Blind Frog Ranch.
