Brendan Jesus
There is a lot to unpack in this week’s episode of Mystery at Blind Frog Ranch, but before we do, there’s something Ufology-related we need to discuss. And no, we’re not going to discuss the fact that Lue Elizondo has doubled down on using more debunked photos in his presentations or that he may have lied to Congress regarding his involvement with AAWSAP/AATIP. No, we’re going to take a quick swing at something going on regarding Immaculate Constellation.
A few moving parts are coinciding, and I want to get to Blind Frog Ranch, so let’s take a super quick look. In 2016, Jeremy Corbell produced Immaculate Deception: The John Lear Story. Cut to a few months ago when Michael Shellenberger allegedly approaches bonafide grifter and garbage person Nancy Mace with the Immaculate Constellation document. When this document was brought up later, the cover page was missing. Jeremy Corbell then brings up the fact that the front page of this report is missing. Why would Jeremy Corbell make note of a missing page? Well, people at the hearing stated they witnessed Jeremy Corbell passing this document and handing it off himself—not Michael Shellenberger.
Long story short, could Jeremy Corbell have fabricated this document, which contains no listed agencies within the intelligence community? And, apparently, there are no listed sources within the document. Hmm. Look, I enjoy listening to Weaponized. As someone who believes in UAPs, extraterrestrial life, NHI, and all that stuff, it’s frustrating when people who say they want ‘D’isclosure are [potentially] the ones fabricating the ‘evidence.’ I’m not saying Jeremy Corbell is lying, but there are too many things out there that point to Immaculate Constellation being nothing more than a valiant attempt at forcing ‘D’isclosure. If you want to dig deeper into where I found all this information, The Average Chris and Jay Anderson are two great Twitter threads worth checking out.
With that out of the way, let’s head back to the Uinta Mountains and see if we get any closer to uncovering the Mystery…at Blind Frog Ranch.
Cave Construction
We join Chad Ollinger and Eric Drummond at the South Cave. They’re clearing the debris from when the rocks previously fell on them during their last incursion into the Great Cave. They plan to stabilize the hole with timber to ensure this doesn’t happen again, and Eric takes some measurements of the hole to start cutting the timber.
The goal is to use vertical timber posts connected by horizontal cap beams. The frame will be covered on the top and sides with lagging beams. This is no small feat, as each piece needs to be brought in one by one, and they must start from the back and work forward. You may be thinking, why use wood instead of steel? Well, wood can support 1,200 pounds per square inch, is much easier to get than steel, and the sound of cracking wood would give them an indication of an impending collapse. Eric says that everything needs to be precise, or it could spell danger. Duane Ollinger radios Chad and Eric and tells them to meet at the Hideout.
New Man On Campus
Duane reveals that a new expert will be joining them. This new man is Josh Feldman, a seasoned treasure hunter. Josh and Duane pull up to the Hideout, where James Keenan, Charlie Boy, Chad, and Eric are. Josh is a gold miner from Arizona with hundreds of expeditions under his belt. Previously, Josh and his family found remains of the Lost Dutchman’s Mine. This mine was hidden in Arizona’s Superstition Mountains and was rumored to have millions of gold bullion buried deep within. The Lost Dutchman’s Mine was named after the German prospector Jacob “The Dutchman” Waltz, which was lost after his death…that is, until Josh and his family found it.
Duane brings Josh to the ranch because he believes Josh’s experience is not only invaluable but also on track with what they’re trying to do. Josh is confident that through superstitions, lore, history, and science, he will be able to help Duane and his team find the treasure beneath the ranch. While also wanting to help them find the treasure, Josh sees a lot of himself and his father in the relationship between Duane and Chad. They take Josh to the Hideout and fill him in on basically everything they’ve come across to this point.
There’s something that Chad says in a talking head that got me thinking, something I started to notice in Season 3 but didn’t really put my finger on it until Season 4. Chad says it’s good that Josh is here and that many experts have come to the ranch. He also mentions that Duane has had recent health complications. While it has been four years since the show started, Duane has significantly slowed down. His speech has become slower and more deliberate. He does less of the things he used to do. This makes me sad to see. Duane still has the passion and love for what he’s doing here, but he clearly needs more agile hands at the helm.
James goes over everything we learned about the Aztecs and their possible upbringing in Utah, but if you want a refresher on all of that, you can check out our coverage of “Into the Cavern Pt. 2” for an in-depth look. After hearing all of this, Josh is confident he can be of great assistance to the team.
Duane and the team hop into some vehicles to give Josh a boots-on-the-ground tour of the hot spots. Our first stop is at the Bead Site, where Josh and Duane join James and Charlie Boy. Josh is confident these beads were used for trading, though we’ll come to learn later this episode that he may be incorrect about that. Within his first handful of Bead Site dirt, Josh finds beads…and something else. He finds a fragment of a dinosaur bone.
Not only does he realize the Shelter Area (what he calls the location of the inset of the Bead Site overhang) was formed in either the late Triassic or early Jurrasic era, but that the dinosaur bone fragment could be at least 120 million years old. Could you imagine holding something that old? I’ve held coins from the early 1950s and thought that was cool. I couldn’t imagine holding a bone that was 4,000,000 times older than me. Josh is particularly struck by this find as he has never once found a dinosaur bone at a Native American site like this. To Josh, this means either someone placed the bone fragment here or that there is a larger dinosaur fossil in this area.
Next, they take Josh a few feet over to where the smoke vents are. They reveal that Dr. Bob Morton carbon dated the soot on the rock face and found that the materials were from about the time the Aztecs would have returned to this land after escaping Mexico. That’s when Josh makes an interesting observation: the dirt around the base of the chimney vents is much higher in elevation than the Bead Site, even though they exist on a relatively similar plane. Josh thinks they need to remove the dirt around the base of the vents to see if there is a possible cave entrance around the area.
From the Bead Site, Josh joins Eric and Chad at the South Cave. Josh takes one look at the cave entrance and refers to it as a coyote hole. Chad decides the next best step is to take Josh into the cave so he can get a good look at what they’re working with. After heading just a few feet into the cave, Josh makes it very clear to Chad just how unsafe this whole thing is. And that’s with the newly added timber supports. Josh makes note of the quartz veins as they crawl through, which is indicative of gold.
The two men reach the Tunnel Fork, roughly 75 feet into the arduous crawl. Chad reveals that he and Eric put an endoscope through the tiny Tunnel Fork opening and saw an animal. This leads Josh to believe there must be another opening for an animal to get into, as this one is way too small. Suddenly, Josh sees something back in the hole and hears a loud echo. This, too, leads Josh to believe there’s a much larger opening beyond the tunnel fork.
Chad asks if they could bring a jackhammer to the Tunnel Fork to make an entrance into this tiny hole. Josh says hypothetically, yes. But the dangers significantly outweigh the rewards. If they do decide to go through with trying to make an entrance into the Tunnel Fork, they will literally need to go inch-by-inch or risk a life-threatening cave-in.
Even though the occurrence remains strange, Josh and Chad continue their crawl. They eventually make it into the Great Cavern. After seeing the hand-cut logs, Josh agrees with what Eric said when he was there: Someone must have brought these longs in through another entrance. The Great Cavern, Josh claims, would have been the portal of the operation. How the logs are scattered here implies there was a cave-in of sorts and that whoever was working within the Great Cavern abandoned it.
Men At Work
Later that day, everyone reconvenes at the Miner’s Shack. Duane asks Josh to put together a plan of attack. Firstly, Josh replies they need to excavate the area around the vent holes. Simultaneously, the Bead Site must also be combed through and excavated. Thirdly, Chad and Eric must continue their work within the South Cave and use a magnetometer to find any potential voids within. Josh ends this by saying hidden treasure is hidden for a reason…but that doesn’t mean it can’t be found.
Listen, Don’t Speak
What happens next is something I truly appreciate this show for. They’ve often brought Indigenous voices onto the show to voice their concerns. Rather than trying to implement commentary into my coverage, I’m just going to summarize what their next guest says to them. Indigenous voices have been ignored for far too long, so listen to what Mary Murdock Meyer has to say.
Duane, Chad, Eric, Josh, James, and Charlie Boy head out to the Bead Site with the Chief Executive of the Timpanogos Nation, Mary Murdock Meyer (Josh invited her out). Josh hopes that Mary can shed some light on why this location is significant to what they’re finding. Mary refuses to touch the beads because, she says, when you make something, you pray over it. Touching beads that are not meant for you diminishes what they represent. Beads are used for many things like ceremonies and burial sites–they’re offerings. So be careful when you see beads, and be even more mindful about touching them.
Back at the Hideout, Mary continues. Timpanogos is an Aztec word, and that’s why the Shoshone language is called Aztecan. When Montezuma sent people here to hide their gold, Hernan Cortez knew to send Spaniards after them in this location to find it. Some scholars believe when the Aztecs fled to Mexico in 1521 to their ancient homeland in Utah, the Timpanogos, the Indigenous peoples of this land, helped the Aztecs protect their treasures in underground caves.
Mary states that shortly after the Spaniards came to Utah, they enslaved their people to try and retrieve the gold. Those who didn’t help the Spaniards were slaughtered. She also states that gold has a spirit with it, and that’s what causes Gold Fever.
Eric mentions the rumbling of the cave and the near-fatal collapse at the South Cave. Mary says there’s a legend about a hill that rumbles all the time, and it’s going to rumble until things are fixed for them (Indigenous people). She ends her history lesson by saying that many of their people are upset when they see gold hunters and that gold, especially hidden gold, isn’t meant to be found.
So, What Next?
Duane and Charlie Boy head to the vent holes with an excavator. Duane starts the digging as Charlie Boy looks through the soil for anything. While they do this, Josh and James meticulously (and carefully) dig through the soil at the Bead Site. Josh quickly gets a hit on something metal, which turns out to be a large copper metal bead. The episode ends with Josh stating that Aztecs used to trade in copper beads.
Final Thoughts
What Mary Murdock Meyer said was incredibly powerful–there’s something darkly funny (and not in a good way) about how, after her long speech to them, they just start digging anyway. I appreciate Josh bringing Mary out to the ranch. Hearing her speak was incredibly powerful to hear. As stated earlier, Native American history has long been whitewashed to make us feel better for the atrocities we, and many other people, have committed against them.
That aside, I’m glad they brought someone like Josh on board. He seems just as excited and raring to go as everyone else involved, and his knowledge will be invaluable. On the surface, it may seem that not much happened in this episode, but I would take the opposite stance. Season 4, Episode 2, acts as a great roadmap for what’s going on and what’s to come. I, for one, hope this is just the start of getting deeper into what’s really going on behind the Mystery…at Blind Frog Ranch.
I lived in AZ for 55 years. I briefly searched for the Lost Dutchman Mine, too. But, as far as I know, it has NEVER been found! For Josh to claim that he found it is bogus!