Original subtitles

There was an area on this mesa slope,

and it led to this open cave.

Hey, I found what looks like to be a cavern.

Oh, yeah. I'm pretty sure this is it.

Popping smoke, popping smoke.

Look, look, it's getting sucked in.

There is some sort of network underneath the mesa.

I'm very curious to find out what may be hidden in that area.

NARRATOR: There is a ranch in Northern Utah.

It is considered the epicenter

of the strangest and most disturbing phenomena on Earth:

animal mutilations,

bizarre UFO sightings

and unusual energies that have proven harmful to humans.

For 20 years, the federal government

tried to find answers and failed.

Now a new team of dedicated scientists,

researchers and experts has taken over.

They are determined to solve the mystery and reveal...

...The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch.

-THOMAS: They're here. -BRYANT: Awesome.

THOMAS: I'm excited for the equipment.

TRAVIS: After last week, when Chris Bartel,

who worked security on the ranch for Robert Bigelow more than

a decade ago, showed us where a cave entrance in the mesa had

mysteriously been covered over,

we invited a team of drillers to the ranch

to help figure out what the Bigelow team

might have wanted to keep hidden.

THOMAS: Okay.

BRYANT: Welcome to Skinwalker Ranch, man.

-I'm Bryant. Nice to meet you. -Aaron.

-Erik Bard. Welcome. -Aaron. -Thanks for coming out.

Well, we've had all kinds of, uh,

strange things happening in the mesa.

I think that there is something there

that we need to investigate further.

Okay.

We inherited so many different stories

about strange things happening out there.

Yeah.

BRYANT: The mesa has always been

a point of interest for us.

There are all sorts of rumors and stories about things that

happened while the Bigelow team was here on the property.

I've even heard a story of

people claiming to see the side of the mesa open up

and a spaceship flying in and it closing up again.

Or stories about these openings that lead to

some sort of an underground base or cavern.

I think there's a lot more there to be discovered,

and we need to spend more time over there exploring.

TRAVIS: Hearing those kinds of rumors makes you wonder

how anything of the sort could be possible in a solid

sandstone mesa that covers about three square miles.

But just last week, after Chris Bartel's visit,

we dropped smoke bombs into the crevices between the large

boulders covering this supposed cave entrance.

-Orange smoke, orange smoke. -TRAVIS: And inexplicably,

the smoke was being sucked down inside somewhere,

like there really could be a huge cavern system of some kind.

Look, look, it's getting sucked in.

Yeah, the smoke's going down.

We're hoping that we can go drill through it

and see if we hit any voids or any type of...

You know, we really don't know what to expect.

Well, we'll just get the drill off the trailer

and then start walking it, so...

-THOMAS: Okay. -You let us know what we can do to help.

Okay. Will do.

BRYANT: Aaron and his crew from

Straight Shot Drilling, they're gonna do some

horizontal drilling into the side of the mesa.

The way that this horizontal drill works

is they're actually gonna go down under the road,

under this canal, and then

be able to maneuver up and hopefully

puncture up into the mesa and see if we find a void there.

You want to just park up here a little bit?

BRANDON: Given the ongoing anomalies witnessed at the mesa,

everything from smoke

being sucked into the mesa

and disappearing into an unknown

chamber or cavern system,

coupled with other anomalies...

-Is that plugging into the USB here? -Yeah.

BRANDON: Considering all the evidence

that has been presented,

I've given my approval

to proceed forward,

with caution.

We're using the RF spectrum analyzer,

which we've used on pretty much all of these digs.

I'm data logging for gamma radiation,

-as we've gotten when we do digs. -Yeah.

Also, since we've got

GPS anomalies showing up out here in the field,

I'm doing real-time GPS tracking,

and so we're getting a data point

every second on those guys, and they're data logging.

There really isn't any place that we can go and not be

exposed to some level of background radiation,

but when we get gamma ray spikes during

our experiments, that's when we become concerned.

So, before we start disturbing the earth,

we want to make sure that we have

all the monitoring equipment in place

to detect anything that we might stir up inside the mesa itself.

So, we'll, uh,

dig an exit pit right here for the mud,

and then we'll set up behind that pit

and drill in, and our bit has a beacon in it,

and we have

the equipment to locate that beacon

all the way up to where you guys want to go.

You said you could reach 500 feet?

-Is how much rod you've got with you? -AARON: Right.

-I have 500 foot of rod right now. -ERIK: Wow.

-This is awesome. -Yeah.

THOMAS: Well, I think that we, uh, get to work.

-Get you guys drilling. -All right.

THOMAS: Ever since I've gotten here on the ranch,

we've been really curious what lies underneath the mesa.

So, the guys are gonna begin drilling

by digging a pit on the south side of the road.

This pit allows them to catch all of the drill mud

and the spoils that are coming out

of the hole as they drill.

Yeah, man.

THOMAS: I think that it may tell us

something pretty interesting about what's

going on near the mesa.

Well, I say we get the drill set up and get going on this.

All right.

AARON: The rig that we're using is a directional bore machine.

It has 30,000 pounds

of push and pull, and you can guide the drill bit

wherever you want it to go.

It could go left,

or it could go right.

Or I can steer it to come up, or I can steer it to go down.

It is that one, right?

Yeah. So, where that little clay outcropping is.

If we came in at the edge of those rocks

or just a little bit under them, that's...

I mean, that's right where that opening's at.

-Make sense? Okay. -Okay. Yeah.

TRAVIS: The drill bar requires hundreds of gallons

of water to keep it lubricated

as it penetrates into

the sandstone rock that the mesa's made from.

So, it's gonna be an extra messy job

for the team to look for clues

as the water and spoils shoot back out into the pit

they dug by the rig.

But hopefully, by the end of the day,

they'll confirm if there's a big void

and even obtain evidence

of an object or structure that could be hidden inside there.

You're all good to go, huh? Okay.

AARON: Inside that head of that drill

is a beacon.

And the beacon is the brains of it.

We can follow it with the locator, and it will

tell me where I'm at,

how deep I am, what my pitch is

and what direction I'm going in.

-So, do you have to walk along and track... -Yeah.

...wherever that's going? So, you'd have to hoof it up there?

Yeah. I'll be doing some hiking.

-Is it pretty soft drilling? -No.

-Really? -It's not in the rock.

It feels like a really tight, sticky clay.

Have you hit the mesa yet?

No.

-Still a ways this way? -Yeah.

Cool.

Yeah, he's up against something hard.

Okay, well...

I think we should go up with your safe camera idea.

All right, well, if were gonna go for a hike, I'm gonna shed

a couple layers here.

BRYANT: This drilling process takes a lot of time,

so in the meantime, Thomas and I have decided

to hike up the mesa

to where we had previously dropped

these smoke canisters down.

I don't know what the path of least resistance is.

You've been up there the most, so I'll follow you.

Well, there is no path of least resistance.

BRYANT: We want to see if we can run

a snake camera down

and see if we can figure out how deep this thing goes

or if we see anything strange.

-The hole's right here. -Okay.

This one actually has

the ability to pan, tilt and zoom,

so if we get it down in there,

we can actually, with this little remote right here,

we can move it around.

THOMAS: Maybe the camera will reveal some clues to us.

Maybe we'll see an opening or a void as we

channel this snake cam deep into the hill.

I think we're live.

-I'm gonna hit record. -All right.

THOMAS: Still going down?

You're still going.

THOMAS: I have not seen any sign of smoke bombs.

-Neither have I. -I thought for sure we'd see those.

BRYANT: Now we're down 21 feet.

I mean, that's pretty far down.

What the hell is that?

BRYANT: What is that?

It looks like metal right there on the top.

It definitely looks like it's reflecting

something off of there.

Those smoke canisters we dropped down there

were basically just paper and cardboard.

There's nothing reflective on them.

BRYANT: What is that?

It looks metallic.

BRYANT: It really does look metallic.

THOMAS: This object is sitting about 23 and a half feet

below the entrance of this hole,

and we're trying to get the camera

in position to see what it is,

and I can't tell what it is.

I'd definitely like to find a way of getting it out of there.

It looks like it could go more

if we can actually manipulate it.

-It looks like it's almost like on a ledge. -I want to see if I can...

THOMAS: It appears to be pretty large.

Let me see if I can somehow manipulate

this camera into it with a different angle.

BRYANT: Oh, gosh, I wish we could get

something down there and retrieve that.

There's your canister.

-There's the smoke bomb. -It got wedged, and there's still even more opening.

There's the base of the smoke bomb right there.

So, we know that that other thing is not the smoke canister.

'Cause that other thing didn't look anything like that.

Well, you know, Chris Bartel talked about

a significant opening.

-Uh-huh. -This is definitely significant.

I mean, we are 26-ish feet.

THOMAS: There's all kinds of rumors

that have been floating around this ranch

since the day that I stepped foot on it.

Whether it be

the mesa opening up and some type

of aerial craft flying into the hill,

secret underground bases under the mesa.

BRYANT: I really was surprised with what we found.

I've never seen anything like it anywhere on the ranch.

Is this hard evidence that there is truly

something going on inside this mesa?

I'm really anxious to see what we find out.

Well, I'll tell you what. That's as far as we're going.

Okay.

Well, I think we've got what we need here.

I'm gonna just power this thing off.

-I'm shocked we got down so far, actually, to be honest with you. -I-- Honestly.

It's becoming obvious to me that there's many,

many different channels and-and chambers down this hole.

Some of them appear to be very, very large.

There's definitely a lot of empty space inside this mesa.

That was really surprising.

I want to get in there more than ever now and discover,

where is this metal coming from?

-THOMAS: Hey, Erik. -Hey, Tom.

I'm really interested in what you guys found up there.

I feel like we got about a third of the way down the mesa.

When we got down in that 20, 24-foot range,

we saw something that looks completely out of place.

The first thought, maybe, it might have been

the outside of one of those smoke canisters.

-ERIK: Yeah. -But this was not.

THOMAS: The object appeared

to be reflecting light back,

-like it was metallic. -Uh-huh.

It was, like, ridges and lines

of-of a metallic-looking or reflective type stuff,

not packaging of some sort that would be reflecting light.

ERIK: What is this material made of,

and what is it doing

in the depths of a mesa in eastern Utah?

We're gonna be drilling for a while.

So, now, really, we need to

call Travis and tell him what we found.

-Yeah. I agree. -Let's do it.

-TRAVIS: Hey, fellas. -ERIK: Hey, Travis.

-Hey, there. -How you guys doing?

It-it's been a busy time out here.

BRYANT: Yeah.

While the drill rig was going on,

on the side of the mesa, Thomas and I decided

to go back up to that hole at the top

where, you remember the smoke vacuumed

back down into the hole.

That cavern that Chris Bartel showed us.

Right, right. It vanished, yeah.

So, we went up there and started running

this snake camera down and encountered

an object that looks

like it has a metallic quality to it.

What?

In fact, it was reflecting our light back at us.

We found those smoke canisters,

and so we have those to reference against.

It didn't look anything like that.

Wow.

Travis, I want to get your eyes on this material.

Take a look at that image.

TRAVIS: Oh, wow.

Do you see that shiny object there,

near the bottom of the image?

TRAVIS: It looks like a...

I don't know, a strip of aluminum or something.

-Is there any way to get a sample of that? -We couldn't pick it up.

TRAVIS: It'd be really good to see what it is.

Clearly, lines

and yellow,

and there's a black strip

and then other black strips on it.

How'd it get down in that hole?

Well, it definitely looks out of place.

And that was about 23 and a half feet down,

is where we encountered that.

TRAVIS: And is it a single piece

or something poking out of that rock?

THOMAS: That's what we were wondering.

Wow.

Well, for this to be that far down in that hole,

I mean, it didn't get there by itself.

And to what end?

I mean, why is this thing there, and what is it?

It sounds like there's a significant void or something.

BRYANT: This particular snake cam

has the ability to tilt

and zoom and pan around, so we could see that

the opening was quite substantial.

THOMAS: From the camera, it looked like that hole

could've been as much as maybe ten foot in diameter.

You're kidding.

Wow. So, there might actually be

some caves under there, then.

TRAVIS: The video is unmistakable.

This is clearly some type of metallic-looking material.

I don't know how it got there, but we immediately

need to put some sort of robot in this hole

to see if it's a single object

or part of something much bigger.

Well, we've got a lot to do.

Hurry up and finish your crap in Alabama

and get the hell back here.

(laughs) All right, man.

Uh, I hear you. This is amazing stuff.

I-I can't wait to get back out there

and do some more drilling into the mesa.

-That's crazy stuff. -THOMAS: For sure.

ERIK: All right, well,

we'll get back in touch with you

if we see anything else like this, Travis.

TRAVIS: All right. Thanks, guys.

-THOMAS: See you soon. -BRYANT: All right, see you.

-How deep are you? -80 feet.

-You're 80 feet out? -AARON: Yup.

Right now, he said he's drilled back 80 feet, so...

-Oh. -Oh, wow.

He's, uh, motioning for us

-to come down there, guys. -BRYANT: All right.

What's going on?

We can keep drilling,

but I just don't know where it's going.

ERIK: As we continue drilling at this site,

that slurry of water and bentonite clay

going into the mesa should be coming out of the mesa,

but it's not.

How many gallons of fluid are we into this now

that haven't come back out?

500 out of this tank,

1,000 out of the last one

and four out of the first.

THOMAS: This fluid has to be flowing into some

cavity along the path.

-AARON: Correct. Yeah. -BRYANT: So, we're talking

2,000 gallons, around there?

It could be punching through into that void.

Wow.

-So, those tanks are 1,000 gallons each. -Okay.

THOMAS: So, you can picture the size of that

-sitting somewhere inside that hill. -Yeah.

TRAVIS: The drill bit is lubricated by water

as it punches through the base of the mesa,

and so far, more than 1,500 gallons has been used

to get nearly 100 feet inside.

You'd expect to see that water run back out into the pit,

but it's not.

That's just like what happened last week.

Popping smoke. Popping smoke.

TRAVIS: When we dropped smoke bombs

in the crevices of the mesa,

-no smoke emerged. -THOMAS: Look.

Look. It's getting sucked in.

There has to be a massive void in there.

It's just a question of how big it is and what it might contain.

Whoa, look at this. That. What's going on there?

Okay, so there it is again.

Again, we're doing something here that we've not done before.

Out here, outdoors, with this thing running.

Yup.

ERIK: And so,

um, there's a correlation.

-Always. -Yeah.

ERIK: I noticed that the spectrum analyzer

is giving us, once again,

this mysterious 1.6 gigahertz signal,

like the one recently captured at Homestead Two.

Erik, are you doing something at 1.6?

I'm not broadcasting.

THOMAS: What are you seeing?

TRAVIS: The signal. 1.60000.

Look at that.

TRAVIS: Two weeks ago,

just after we dug a trench

near Homestead Two,

that night, we detected

the mysterious 1.6 gigahertz RF radiation signal.

And then, later, Erik's surveillance cameras

caught an incredible UAP floating around the homestead.

-What the hell is that? -TRAVIS: You captured

a UAP on camera here, Erik.

Every time we've seen that signal,

something really strange has happened.

ERIK: Hey, Bryant. If you guys are game,

I've got some handheld instruments

that you could take out to the homesteads.

You know, j-just wander about and see if you get any

unusual readings out there.

Yeah, it always seems like, it's almost,

like, a bait-and-switch type of a thing.

You focus your energies in one spot,

-and then, all of a sudden, stuff happens in other areas. -Right.

Well, do you want to go head down

-to the homestead, then? -Yeah.

Okay. Let's do it.

ERIK: I've decided to send Tom and Dragon

out to the homesteads

and see if we pick up anything happening out there.

Erik, it looks like we have flow back.

You starting to get some of the fluid coming back?

Yeah, it looks like we got it back.

Yeah. I can see that coming out.

So, after about 2,000 gallons, we're finally starting

to see some of our water.

AARON: Yup.

So, how's the drilling going?

As you can see, it's a little hard still.

So, if there's a void in there, maybe we filled it up.

Yeah. That's a possibility.

All right. Let me know if you see anything else change.

Okay.

I guess we'll walk around with both the Geiger counter,

and then you've got the tri-field meter.

We'll see if anything strange pops up

and keep in touch with them.

Yeah. So far, so good.

BRYANT: I've also got the lightning detector.

And right now, it's not measuring

anything above background.

Okay. Yeah.

Let's walk around the back where we've seen some strange stuff,

and then I guess we could even poke around inside

-the building a little bit. -Okay.

Yeah.

THOMAS: We're about probably 25 feet from...

McCOY: Wait, hold on. Listen to that right there.

CHASE: You can hear him.

(machinery rattling)

Come on, sweetheart.

THOMAS: We can hear the drill bit,

-down below, punching. -Copy you.

CHASE: He's right here.

THOMAS: I can feel the vibration.

CHASE: What you're hearing, though, over here

is like I said, it's that paddle bit.

-THOMAS: Right. -CHASE: And so, every time it makes

a rotation, you'll hear it smack.

Right.

However, considering that he's eleven foot five,

he's pretty damn deep for us to hear it that loud.

McCOY: Usually when he's at 11,

-we don't hear it. -We don't hear him.

So, guys, uh, there is something of interest here.

That bit

is down 11 feet from the surface,

and we can hear it really good,

like it's just six inches below the soil.

These guys are saying, usually,

when it's that deep, you can't hear it.

Yeah. Ten-four.

Copy you, Tom. That's really interesting.

He must be into something really solid

that's carrying the vibration well.

Ten-four.

Yeah, I'm up against something pretty hard right now.

(computer beeping)

-Now, what am I getting? -I don't know.

It's a lot of noise.

ERIK: Oh, wow.

Whoa.

This doggone thing is broadcasting.

This thing shouldn't be broadcasting anything.

Why would a device that's designed to receive

be broadcasting?

Hey, Bryant? Tom? You copy?

Yeah, I got you. Go ahead, Erik.

ERIK: We've got an

RF spectrum analyzer, which is a receiver,

that seems to be broadcasting

instead of just receiving.

That's not good.

Well, just have a listen at this.

(beeping, static crackling)

BRYANT: Are you okay?

No.

BRYANT: Are you okay?

No. I just, I just blacked out.

BRYANT: Like, blacked out?

Yeah, it was, like,

all the blood rushed out of my-my brain.

This is not okay.

Here, help me up.

Dude, you're shaking.

-You want to go? -Yeah. Let's go.

-I can't feel my hand. -You, like...

You can't, you can't feel your hand?

I c-can't feel my hand.

-That's your left arm? -It's my left arm.

That's scary, dude. I don't... Here, give me--

Put your arm around me.

I don't want to (bleep) around with that.

BRYANT: Tom Lewis said that

he had no feeling in his left arm.

I knew it had to be

something cardiac-related.

With my position on the ranch, I made the decision

right then and there to get him the hell out of here.

You have any chest pains?

TOM: No, but it's hard to keep my breath.

(bleep)

BRYANT: I don't know what it is about this area.

I've never felt anything strange,

but where Tom Lewis went down is also within feet

of where Roland McCook almost blacked out.

-Hold on. -Hey.

BRYANT: And it's where Travis had his radiation burns.

I really want to find out what's truly happening

on Skinwalker Ranch

but not at the cost of people's health and welfare.

BRYANT (over walkie-talkie): Hey, you guys.

Tom is experiencing stuff. He blacked out--

blacked out, has pain in his arm.

KANDUS: Are you serious? Oh.

BRYANT: I'm getting him the hell out of here.

I'm pretty concerned.

I need my bag. It's got my phone in it.

He's taking him straight to the emergency room.

I think so.

ERIK: We need to get the truck out of the road.

(grunts)

I need to clear this out of the way.

Let's just move it.

ERIK: Maybe that's the better way to go.

THOMAS: Bryant, Kandus is right behind you.

So, you can be watching for her.

(phone line ringing)

BRYANT: Hey, Brandon.

I'm calling because we had an urgent matter

that you need to know about.

We were doing the drilling exercise,

and Tom Lewis and I were near Homestead Two.

He started to black out, basically collapsed,

was complaining about pain down his arm.

So, I immediately rushed him out of there.

And Kandus met us at the hospital.

BRANDON: I've known Tom Lewis for most of my life.

We grew up together.

Having Tom collapse

in conjunction with the drilling activity,

it leaves me

stunned and speechless.

For the time being, I'm just gonna keep

everybody away from Homestead Two.

-Thank you. -Bye.

BRANDON: I trust Dragon and his

dedication to safety.

So long as we're implementing the right health

and safety protocols and measures

to keep everyone safe...

THOMAS: Looks like Bryant's back.

BRANDON: ...I am open to allowing

further exploration of the property.

Well, I hope he's got good news.

So, uh, updates?

BRYANT: Not yet.

ERIK: So, I really want to know

what you think about continuing what we're doing.

BRYANT: So, nothing measured

at all on any of the instrumentation.

-Right. -BRYANT: The other thing is,

I don't feel anything, you guys have felt

-perfectly fine. -No.

We're a team here. How do you feel about

continuing the exercise, given what has taken place?

That took place over there.

Yup. It did.

THOMAS: So, as long as the readings

are all normal and-and we're feeling fine,

I don't know why we would shut her down.

Yeah, I just don't want anybody, anybody seriously hurt.

-Hey, guys, come over here. -ERIK: You hear that?

What's going on?

Well, it looks like we're in

a ledge that's holding this from coming up.

So, the-the ledge is coming to where it won't let

-your bit catch and go up? -Right.

Right. And I'm just hitting it and riding it.

Can you tell whether it's clay or rock?

Not really sure what it is.

So, is this something you often run into?

We'll run into it every once in a while, but usually,

I can get out of it.

But I've been in it for probably,

I'd say four rods now.

Yeah, 40 feet.

-BRYANT: Really? -Yeah.

What's your recommendation?

We just keep going the way we're going and see

if we can get out of it.

Okay. See how far back before you can get...

Start coming up.

Okay, well, I guess you keep

adding rod length to it and see if

we can finally pop out.

Let us know if you get on the back side

and you're able to come up.

I will.

Okay.

THOMAS: So, Aaron keeps hitting a hard surface,

and it's not allowing the bit

to penetrate and go on up through it.

THOMAS: You know what? I think it

might be wise to just shut it down

for a little bit and, uh...

-Yeah. -...regroup.

BRYANT: Yeah, I agree.

We've got so much crap going on right now,

given the fact that we're hitting this thing that

they can't get through, the episode with Tom,

the weirdness with your meters and everything like that,

I just think that

maybe it's time to give this a rest.

Hey, Aaron!

THOMAS: All right, well, if that's it, we can head back.

(monitor beeping)

We're here at the emergency room. Still.

The doctor finally came with results,

and, basically,

couldn't say what exactly happened

to cause Tom to pass out or black out.

He said my heart is skipping beats

every so often,

and so he's running

lots of lab tests to see if he can figure out why.

It's very unsettling because of

the sequence of events that led up to that radio call

for-for what I was experiencing

and the sounds that Erik was sharing with everyone

and the way that it starts to...

It's... (sighs)

Those things don't seem coincidental,

just like so many others.

Of course.

Once again, more questions than answers,

but... at least I'm alive.

-(laughs): Yeah. -(chuckles)

It was scary, and that's all for now.

ERIK: Aaron, I really want to understand

what we're up against here inside of this mesa.

I'd like to know, how unusual is it,

in your experience, to not be able

to punch up through something like this?

Well, seeing the rock that is on the ground out here,

and it's a sandstone type of rock,

the stuff that we are using right now to drill up

through this mesa, it should go through that...

layer pretty easily.

And it's not.

Does that make you think that

maybe what you're up against is

something other than sandstone?

Yeah.

I wonder what that is.

THOMAS: How far back are we?

We are about 300 feet.

THOMAS: Now that you've got a little bit

of the mud flowing back from here, too,

where you're hitting some of this hard surface

and where you've been bumping up against this,

whatever it is,

uh, I'm gonna be really fascinated

to see what's coming out of that hole.

So, when you guys get ready to dump the spoils,

we definitely want to put a screen under there

and catch it and just see

if maybe we might be able to discern...

I mean, you're saying that whatever you're hitting

is harder than sandstone.

-Correct. -THOMAS: And so,

maybe you're chipping it,

or-or piece of it, kind of, is coming out,

so I think that we definitely want to analyze that.

And if we're doing that, it should be

at the bottom of that pit right there.

-THOMAS: Okay. -So...

All right, we'll let you get back to work.

-Thank you. -All right.

THOMAS: What happened to Tom,

it's serious.

The ranch takes a toll on people.

But we need to move forward,

go back into the hole and keep drilling.

As we get deeper into the hill,

the mud finally starts flowing.

It fills up this large hole that they dug with the backhoe

to catch this stuff.

It becomes necessary to vacuum it out.

I wonder what that black stuff is.

I don't know.

-AARON: Hey, Thomas. -Yeah.

My, uh, back's full. I need to go dump it.

Oh, okay.

All right.

THOMAS: You think that'll catch it?

McCOY: Yeah.

THOMAS: We put a screen underneath of it

when we dumped it, just to see if we could catch

anything that might be coming out of that hole.

Okay.

What is that?

Hey, uh...

Look at that.

Thomas, what are you seeing?

-THOMAS: I don't know if that's a rock... -Looks like you're studying...

THOMAS: ...or if it's like rust or...

-Oh, my. -THOMAS: Just rock?

-It's brittle. -ERIK: This is really thin.

What did you think it was when you first saw it?

THOMAS: I wondered if it was, like, metal flakes or something.

That's exactly the same impression I got.

THOMAS: Yeah, there's quite a bit of that flake stuff in here.

ERIK: Yeah, you got a good eye, Thomas.

I don't know how you spotted that in all that mess.

THOMAS: I mean... (sighs, stammers)

-You know when a piece of metal rusts and then flakes off? -Uh-huh.

Yeah, that's what came to mind as soon...

as soon as you handed me that.

I'm surprised to see that there are pieces of material--

not rock, possibly metal--

being screened out of that 800-gallon volume of slurry

with bentonite clay.

I don't know what this material is.

At first, it appears to be like rust

or-or some kind of sheet metal

that has been broken into pieces.

-You see that? -I know what it looks like.

Bryant, you want to have a look at this?

THOMAS: I think this is just stuff

-that's fallen down in the... -Mm-hmm.

...hole.

You know, it might be interesting

to put a metal detector...

Well, there's a few things that come to mind.

The metal detector, of course, and then the XRF device.

We can do some elemental analysis on it with the XRF.

You know, it-it also wouldn't hurt to take a look

at this stuff that's coming out and see if we get

elevated gamma readings on it.

What is it that we're hitting inside there?

We've heard of tunnels and caverns

and underground bases here in the mesa.

Could what we hit in the mesa be behind that narrative?

-So this is that really... -Oh, that's...

That's that really large one.

That's the biggest one we found, right?

Yeah, yeah. All right, I-I want to rinse it off

-back here, away from the electronics. -THOMAS: Okay.

Let's get the other side.

All right.

-ERIK: Well, look at that. -Does it have any...?

ERIK: Yeah, look at this surface here. It's all bumpy.

It's a kind of a brown, brownish color.

And this has got streaks of that brown in it,

but there's a black color here on this much flatter,

smoother surface.

Well, let's find out what it is.

Does it have to be dry to analyze it?

-Yeah, I prefer to let the thing dry off. -Okay.

ERIK: In order to identify what that material is,

at least to get a sense of its composition,

I've decided to use the handheld X-ray fluorescence analyzer,

or XRF instrument, and see what elements show up.

I like to describe the XRF device

as basically a fancy X-ray flashlight.

We shine those X-rays at objects

and we look at what X-ray colors come back

to identify the materials of which they're made.

So, this is telling me, on this first reading on this side,

we're looking at calcium, iron, silicon, aluminum, magnesium.

-Wait, iron? -What?

-Yeah, there's... -And aluminum?

Yeah, it's, like, eight percent aluminum on that shot.

How much iron is it?

Uh, th-that time, it was 26%.

So, this is definitely metallic, then?

Oh, yeah. Let's take a look at this other side.

THOMAS: Aluminum. Oh, wow.

-ERIK: Guys? -THOMAS: That number's much different.

Yeah, this side of this thing is showing up

at almost 72% iron.

This thing is just straight-up metal?

This sample is almost solid metal.

Wow.

What is metal doing coming out of the hill 300 feet in?

-ERIK: Hey, guys. -THOMAS: Erik.

I have Travis cued up here to videoconference with us.

We need to bring him up to speed on what's been going on.

Mm-hmm.

ERIK: After finding the material in the mesa,

a deeper and more searching analysis with an XRF device

suggests a much more interesting composition,

potentially a much more interesting history.

So I want to reach out to Travis.

It's important that we get him these findings.

TRAVIS: Hey, fellas.

-BRYANT: Hey, Travis. -How are you guys doing?

It-it's been a busy time out here.

-Yeah, it's been pretty crazy. -Oh, yeah?

-What have y'all been up to? -I took Tom Lewis

with me down to Homestead Two,

and right then and there, Tom Lewis fell to his knees,

basically blacked out.

And it required me getting him to the emergency room.

-Well, is Tom okay? -He is.

Fortunately, the doctors checked him out and they did say

that he had a strange heart arrhythmia,

-which he's never had before. -What?

ERIK: Yeah, this makes no sense, Travis.

Now, it has been pointed out that our drilling

had just reached what would be below ground,

at the base of the mesa,

at the point in time when Tom Lewis had his episode.

That's insane.

And what about the drilling?

We decided to-- the drilling, and we would use a screen,

uh, to screen any material coming out of that-that slurry,

in case we saw any... anything that we think doesn't belong.

-And boy, did we find something. -Really?

It was actually Thomas who noticed

that there were some unusual pieces of material,

uh, sticking out of that bentonite clay residue.

And this material, uh, is flat.

-It is metallic. -Have you got, uh, pieces of it

-that you can show me? -Oh, yes, we do.

We're talking about anywhere from 30%

-to 72% iron. -Wow.

And curiously, we see aluminum in this material.

-Really? -Yeah.

Oh, man, I wish I could zoom in on that.

Does it look like it's got any layering to it?

Any lamination?

My hope is that when we get some additional processing,

we'll be able to answer questions like that.

That's exactly the question that we had on the ground.

But this is some really unusual-looking stuff.

This is not something I would have expected to encounter,

uh, you know, hundreds of feet into the mesa.

TRAVIS: And-and what's it doing there?

That doesn't make sense.

I would normally expect to see iron

only in the form of an oxide in the ground.

Yeah, this has been refined, and it's got a-a mixture

of, uh, other, uh, you know, metals in it.

And to what end?

Yeah, I'm perplexed by the aluminum content,

to be honest.

I don't know why I'm seeing as high as ten percent aluminum

in some of my measurements.

And how did it get 300 feet underneath the mesa?

TRAVIS: These metallic fragments that the drill extracted

from below the base of the mesa

made me wonder if there's a connection

to the metal-looking object that Thomas and Dragon got video of

from the crevice above.

And how whatever could be in the mesa

might be connected to Tom Lewis's health episode.

We need to keep drilling

and get a detailed elemental analysis of that material

from a university-level laboratory

to be certain of just what it is.

ERIK: Well, I guess we're done here for now.

We'll, uh, get back in touch with you

if we see anything else like this, Travis.

All right, thanks, guys. I'll see you guys in a few days.

THOMAS: Okay, see you soon.

KANDUS: While this investigation is important

to everyone here on the team,

everybody's physical health is number one,

above the investigation.

We feel like we're at a crossroads right now,

because what happened with Tom has shaken our comfort level.

BRYANT: As the experiments get bigger and better,

they also get more dangerous and more hazardous.

What are we going to trigger with these bigger experiments?

THOMAS: Metal flakes or something.

TRAVIS: I don't know how this material got inside the mesa.

Could it be from an asteroid impact

or an alien spacecraft or an underground base?

Who knows?

But what we do know is whatever this is,

it's made up of rare and unusual elements.

We need to find out what it's doing here on Skinwalker Ranch.

THOMAS: Well, you guys ready to go at it again?

AARON: Yeah, we're ready.

I'm up against something pretty hard right now.

THOMAS: Look how big that chunk is.

BRYANT: Are we chipping away at something

much larger under the mesa?

It's almost as if it all came off the same object.

TRAVIS: Those materials are used in modern

quantum computer systems.

BRYANT: Is it some sort of a craft that was put in there

that was never supposed to be discovered?

-(low rumble) -What was that?

-(whooshing) -Whoa! What was that?

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