The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch Season 3: What Can We Expect?

In 2008, the government appropriated $22 million to investigate reports of unidentified aerial phenomena, led by the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDSci) founded by Robert Bigelow- the then-owner of the Skinwalker Ranch. The project lasted only for several years with no clear findings related to the UFOs and any other otherworldly incident on the land, despite dozens of claims from inhabitants and neighbors. Find out more about The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch Season 3 here!

The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch Season 3

According to the book Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah (2005) authored by investigative journalist George Knapp and biochemist Colm Kelleher, the most bizarre thing to have ever happened in Skinwalker Ranch until that point was the sudden appearance of a bright light with no apparent source in the middle of a forest. Both Knapp and Kelleher initially thought it was nothing but reflection and then it grew larger. They said the shape looked like the opening of a tunnel. The story didn’t end there as they also witnessed a black faceless creature inside. It walked out of the tunnel into the forest before everything returned to normal.  

With NIDSci disbanded, the search for anomalies in the Skinwalker Ranch fell to the hands of Brandon Fugal, the real estate magnate who bought the property from Robert Bigelow in 2016. Fugal said he had no plans to purchase the 512-acre property until 2015 when two science advisors of the previous owner approached him and asked whether he wanted to advance the study. By then, Bigelow had done the research for almost 20 years. Fugal agreed.

Prior to purchasing the property, Fugal only knew about the Skinwalker Ranch and the anomalies observed in the area from the book. The science advisors then told him about how the land actually was part of a government’s black-budget program to investigate unidentified aerial phenomena. According to Fugal, the results of the investigation remained confidential, but the UAP was real. He came to the property as a sceptic, and now he probably is one of the most serious businessmen in the field.

Just about everybody else was a persistent skeptic. The 2021 release of a government report regarding UFOs shifted the paradigm a great deal. Of all 144 reported UFO sightings, science couldn’t explain 143 of them. The only closed-case incident concluded that a large flying object in the sky was a deflating balloon; there was no alien involved. The follow-up 2022 report included dozens more sightings. It could explain about half of the claims to a sensible degree, although a good chunk remains scientifically perplexing.

Brandon Fugal took the research a step further by inviting more credible experts into the team and actually transformed the investigative journey into a popular TV show “The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch” aired on the History Channel. Starting in 2020, the show has run for four seasons (44 episodes) with a spin-off series “Beyond Skinwalker Ranch” already underway.

The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch series was developed by the same people who created The Curse of Oak Island. It aired for the first time on March 31, 2020 – the first season ran for 8 episodes. The second season began in May 2021, followed by a third season (with greater marketing effort) in January 2022. Season 4 concluded in August 2023.

The biggest revelation so far turned out to be non-extraterrestrial stuff concerning the identity of researcher Dr. Travis Taylor. In an episode in The Secret of Skinwalker Season 3 (June 21, 2022), Dr. Taylor unveiled he was given the position as a chief scientist for a congressionally mandated study of UFOs in the past. Such an assertion suddenly gave a boost to his credibility among viewers, given how the 2021 government report had been made public and shed light on the seriousness of the topic. Another exciting moment was when the show featured former members of the US military connected to the “Tic Tac” incident in 2004. Researchers attempted to replicate the UAP encounter and could shockingly stimulate a similar situation in the ranch.

One thing is certain: the truth is still out there. In May 2022, NASA announced it would prepare funding for a pilot study into UFO phenomena. The news surfaced just months following a request by Congress for the Pentagon to establish an independent UFO office and produce annual reports. The famous Harvard University astrophysicist Avi Loeb has also raised millions of dollars to start his Galileo Project, a study of extraterrestrial phenomena which involves scanning the sky for unidentified flying objects. Dr. Taylor and Loeb attended the Utah Disclosure Symposium in May 2022 as well, where the two discussed several UFO recordings.


We think The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch Season 3 is by far the most exciting to watch. It comes with a flurry of discoveries, although not everything is strictly about alien presence, to bring the mysteries closer to the answers. Whether we can directly credit the show with the flood of institutional interests is not the point; what matters is that the scientific community, the government, and the public at large continue to question all the unexplainable occurrences in the ranch and elsewhere in the world.

Have you watched The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch Season 3? Did you read the government UFO reports? We’d love to hear from you.

Other things you might want to know:

What is the Tic Tac incident?

In a 2021 interview with 60 Minutes, retired Navy Commander David Fravor shared his experience witnessing an unidentified aerial phenomenon during a flight off the coast of Southern California in November 2004. He described the object as mirroring his maneuvers and thought that it was aware of his presence. According to Fravor, the UAP looked like a Tic Tac, hence the name of the incident. Fravor told the same story again during a July 2023 hearing before the House of Representatives.

Has it always been mysterious in the Skinwalker Ranch?

Reports of skin-walkers and UFOs have been coming out of the area for decades, but Skinwalker Ranch didn’t get its reputation as a hunting ground for extraterrestrial phenomena until the 1990s. It was then owned by the Sherman family, who sold it to Robert Bigelow in 1996.

Other than UFO and skin-walkers:

Biochemist Cold Kelleher, co-author of Hunt for the Skinwalker, said he saw a creature that resembled the description of the famous Bigfoot. Kelleher shot the creature, but it quickly vanished.

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