The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch has taken viewers into the infamous 512 acre property in Utah like never before. With 200 years of strange occurrences happening on and around the area, such as animal mutilations, sightings of strange creatures, reports of UFOs and other unexplained oddities, the site has been at the center of speculation for a very long time. The History Channel series had unprecedented access from the current owner of the property, Brandon Fugal, in order to study it and see if any of these events can be explained. Now one scientist who was a part of the team has revealed why he believes Fugal wanted the land examined so closely.
Dr. Travis Taylor was a part of the team of researchers and scientists who studied Skinwalker Ranch last year, and he recently spoke to a group of journalists, including myself, about his time at Skinwalker (which led to terrifying nightmares for him). When asked about what impact Brandon Fugal's religious faith may have had on his willingness to allow such open access to the land and desire to see the property studied, here's what Dr. Taylor said:
I know that Brandon has told me in conversations that it’s his goal in life to find out the answers to the big questions. And that was one of the reasons he was interested in the ranch, because these are unknown phenomena that could be occurring. What he wonders, you know, is this – are they – is it God, is it angels, is it aliens, is it demons? I mean, you know, what could be causing these strange phenomena or is it just something that is a serendipitous piece of nature?
I can certainly appreciate the fact that Brandon Fugal, while a man who values his religious faith, is interested in anything that will grant us answers to the big questions in life. According to what Dr. Travis Taylor said, Fugal is willing to look into anything (in any manner) that might offer up those answers or get humanity closer to them, even buying the potentially very dangerous Skinwalker Ranch.
Brandon Fugal is a real estate developer who bought Skinwalker Ranch in 2016 from aerospace tycoon Robert Bigelow so that he could try to find out what was behind the many mysteries associated with the land. Bigelow, who purchased the ranch in 1996, had spent many years with his own team of researchers looking into Skinwalker and trying to find causes for the things that have been reported there, but those findings were never made public. So, it would seem that Fugal wanted to know some answers badly enough that he was willing to allow for a lot of increased access.
Dr. Travis Taylor also thinks that this desire to discover answers to the big life questions that many of us have is something that he and Brandon Fugal have in common:
I think Brandon hopes that we may find some big answers - from a religious standpoint if not certainly from a more big-picture standpoint – to the question, are we alone in this universe? Honestly that drives me every day to understand and find the answers to the big questions like that. And, I don’t see where religion and / or science are a lot different in that regard, except from the science standpoint we have to have much more rigorous experiments and results than evidence. We can’t take anything on faith.
You can watch Dr. Taylor and his fellow researchers continue to test the unexplained and their own skepticism when The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch continues on History Channel, Tuesdays at 10 p.m. EST. For more on what to watch, be sure to check out our 2020 Netflix premiere guide.
