Brendan Jesus
Wild things have been happening all around the United States this past week! DRONES are taking over our airspaces. And a new documentary on UAP’ D’isclosure is set to premiere in under a week! What a wild time to be alive.
Seeing tweet after tweet, TikTok after TikTok, of these drones has proven one thing: people are gullible. While some of these videos pouring out seem to be drones of some sort, the overwhelming majority are planes. A few weeks ago, there were multiple reports of drones sighted over military bases–this obviously is a case of national security. What’s not national security is videos of planes filmed in dense cloud coverage.
Nearly every single video I’ve seen come across my feed is nothing more than a plane filmed with, presumably, a phone from 2008. But the colorful commentary accompanying these videos is usually something like, “FILM THAT, FILM THAT DRONE. THAT’S A DRONE. THE AIRPORT IS A MILE AWAY. THERE SHOULDN’T BE PLANES HERE. IT’S A DRONE.” Let’s use some common sense people. Somehow, this has made national news.
Drone-mageddon-mania is upon us. That’s not to say every video is of a plane. I do believe there are odd things in the sky. If you’ve kept up with my coverage, you KNOW I believe in NHI. But these videos are just continuing to muddy the waters of ‘D’isclosure. Ufologists are finding themselves wasting their time with debunking every plane video.
A new documentary by The Phenomenon filmmaker James Fox is en route to DPOV. The program will be released on 12/16 and is a nuanced, fair look at ‘D’isclosure. The documentary uses 2023’s House Oversight Committee hearing, where David Grusch boldly hinted at, among other things, the government’s possession of UAP with non-biological entities as the backbone for its story. Fox crafted a unique and fairly unbiased look at the state of ‘D’isclosure in 2024.
All right, that’s enough of that. It’s time to turn our eyes to the Utah ranch we all know and love and see if we are getting any closer to the Mystery…at Blind Frog Ranch.
Arti-FACTS
Season 4 Episode 3, “Death Trap,” ended with James Keenan and Josh Feldman finding an unknown artifact from the Bead Site: Vent Holes, where Duane Ollinger was using the rock wheel to dig into the vent holes. Josh says the object looks like a metate (pronounced meh-tot-ay). James says it’s a perfect piece of stone used as the top side of an altar. (I did some research, and there are instances where a metate is also used as a mortar and pestle of sorts.)
The metate was also used to place goods and offerings. Its placement here infers that other pieces will be present in this location. If you remember Mary Murdock Meyer in Episode 2, “The Curse of the Aztecs,” and Dr. Roger Blomquist in Episode 3, “Death Trap,” both stated that this could very well have been a site used for ceremonies and or burials.
Josh thinks that the metate confirms what Mary and Dr. Bloomquist said and that this is indeed an important cultural site. That’s when Josh gets a text from Chad Ollinger. Chad asks if the four of them can meet him and Eric Drummond at the Hideout.
Once at the Hideout, Chad and Eric reveal to Duane, Charlie Boy, Josh, and James the collapse of the South Cave: Great Cavern. Everyone agrees that they should not re-enter the South Cave and that a new entrance needs to be found. Eric states that some of the world’s largest caves exist on fault lines. Since there are so many fault lines on Blind Frog Ranch, Eric thinks he should use them to look for a new open-air cave entrance. The best way for Eric to go about this is to use LIDAR. He wants to do extensive 3D mapping of the ranch to see if there are any hints for where they should start searching.
Up In The Air
Later that day, Eric and Duane set up the LIDAR drone. LIDAR has been extremely useful in finding the information Eric is after. In 2009, LIDAR found a forgotten Mayan city in the jungles of Guatemala. The LIDAR revealed the ancient city of Karakol, one of the world’s largest cities in 700 C.E.
Eric gets the drone in the air and has it preprogrammed to fly in a grid pattern across many acres. “That’s some Star Trek sh*t,” Duane says with a chuckle. After some time, Eric’s drone finishes its flight. Chad and Eric start to look over the results to see if they have any promising leads on where they can focus their search. After some examination, Eric notices a bare spot on one of the fault lines. He seems to think this could be an open pit mine. This information is promising enough for Chad and Eric to go on an adventure to see what they can find.
Chad and Eric leave the Hideout and embark on a quest to a part of the ranch they have neglected up until now. With boots on the ground, the two men quickly find something that could pose an issue in the near future. They find large animal tracks and bones, and based on the decay of the meat left on the bones, Eric believes it is somewhat fresh. Moreover, they find multiple animal shelters.
As they continue their journey, Chad finds something that didn’t catch my attention long after viewing this episode. These odd foliage formations are fascinating enough, but that’s when Chad finds an animal skull IN a tree. Why would the skull be in a tree and not with the rest of the animal bones? This is all too weird for it not to be discussed. What is clear is that something large is feeding and denning here.
Where There’s Smoke
We meet up with Duane, Charlie Boy, Josh, and James back at the Bead Site: Vent Holes. After finding the metate, Josh tells them they must take things a bit slower. It would be truly awful to destroy potential artifacts because they were hastily digging into the ground. That’s when Charlie Boy notices a tiny hole at the spot where the rock face and the dirt meet. James also discovers rooted dirt in that exact location. This soft-soiled hole goes back quite some distance. But how far back does it really go? Could this be the lead they’ve been looking for the whole time?
Charlie Boy has an idea to see if this hole and the vent holes are connected; let’s smoke it out. They grab a smoke machine and attach a tube to it. The tube is placed into the potential cave opening, and Josh packs dirt around it to create a seal. Charlie Boy starts up the smoke machine and lets it rip.
A minute or two goes by, and nothing comes out of the vent holes. Josh chimes in to say that they could be pumping smoke into a larger void than they realize. More time passes. James thinks he sees smoke, but he quickly retracts it. THAT’S WHEN Duane sees smoke! There is smoke coming out of the vent holes! This undoubtedly proves a connection between the hole Charlie Boy found and the vent holes.
Now, the team must determine where the vent holes turn into an open-air cavern. To do so, Josh suggests feeding his endoscope camera down the holes. Duane raises the excavator’s rock wheel attachment up to the hole, which Josh uses as a platform to stand on.
It’s Mine Time
Chad and Eric are still adventuring around, looking for anything. Eventually, they come across a normal fault where the earth’s crust is broken, thus causing a weakness in the rocks. Eric finds a fault breccia, which forms in the shear zone when you have weaknesses (That was all too scientific for me, but I take him at his word). Their luck turns around when two specific color rocks are found.
The two find reddish/brown (hematite) and green (malachite) rocks. These are indications that they’re on either a gold or silver deposit. Eric says there were miners in Arizona who would say where you find green, you find gold. When rocks like this were found, old-time prospectors would dig open pit mines in that area. The area they are in looks somewhat like an open pit mine, so Eric hopes the hard work was already done for them. At one point, Eric calls a rock beautiful, and Chad jokes about how only a geologist would say something like that.
They’ve come to realize the spot they are in, the bald spot Eric noticed in the LIDAR scan, is indeed an open-pit mine. This is a wide-open area with many underground holes dug out. Tons of limber litters the area–they note that this timber is very similar to what was found in the South Cave: Great Cavern. Eric stumbles upon even more malachite.
As the sun sets, they call it a day. They plan to come back in the morning.
Later, we get some interesting narration about open pit mines, but we can discuss it here quickly. Narration tells us that open pit mines were first implemented in the 1840s in Sutter’s Mill, the first mine in the California gold rush to strike gold. Open pits were adapted from the Ancient Greeks and Romans. These mines are tiered, spiraling pits that allow for heavy machinery to roll in and out of the mines. The largest open-pit mine was the Bingham County Mine, which two Mormon pioneers created. It also happens to reside just a couple of hours away from the ranch.
Human Or Animal?
Back at the Bead Site: Vent Holes, Josh readies his endoscope camera to push through the vent holes. He lowers it down about 20 feet, and at this point, his camera is below where the smoke came in. James notices that the hole is growing, but that’s the moment he tells Josh to stop. Charlie Boy realizes there is a skull in the hole.
After looking at it more closely, Charlie Boy is relieved to see it’s an animal skull. If it were human, all work would immediately have to stop. James is taken aback by this. How did it get in the vent hole? It’s far too big to fit down it. And…why is it charred?
That’s when they realize there are TWO skulls in there! Josh says there must have been a larger opening for the skulls to be placed there. Like Chad and Eric, the men call it a day. In the morning, they will reappraise the vent holes with fresh eyes.
Final Thoughts
Chad and Eric’s open-pit mine seems like an excellent lead for them to look further into. The area has many pre-dug holes, but they’re full of caved-in rocks. Thankfully, they’re able to get some equipment into the area to get some of the rocks out fairly easily. I really like how they’ve split off into two teams. Chad and Eric have great chemistry together, and I love seeing them go off on their own adventure.
The skull(s) at the Bead Site: Vent Holes are fascinating, and I’m curious if, due to finding the metate, they will be comfortable enough to resume the rock wheel digging. With the exception of the open pit mine, the vent holes seem like the team’s next best option for finding an open-air cave. This has led me to question why they don’t attempt to return to the 80-foot hole they dug in Season 2. I get that it was dangerous, but they could take better precautions now that they know what they’re up against.
Oh well. I’m enjoying the ride we’re on for Season 4. And at the end of the day, everything that has happened just makes me more interested in getting to the bottom of the Mystery…at Blind Frog Ranch.
