Emergency Call Leads to Hidden Cave (Season 1) | The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch | History

So, where’s the north border on the other side of the mesa?
How far does it go?

Just to the about the back cliff over there.

Oh, really?

Yeah. Just short of it.

Huh? It looks different from the—

You do you copy?

Yeah. Bryant, go ahead.

We are up at the sinkhole doing this radiation sweep.
You guys should get just straight over here.
We found some crazy stuff you’re going to want to see.

While Tom Winterton and I are taking a tour of the ranch,
we get this emergency call, and it’s from the team that’s up on the mesa
scanning for harmful levels of radiation and microwaves.

All right, we will head straight over there.
You’ll see us soon.

My first thought was whether or not the guys were getting the kinds of crazy readings
we measured yesterday when we were up on the mesa.

I mean, that’s a significant amount of energy right there.

We found electromagnetic radiation that could be harmful to humans.

Oh, and it’s shifted now.
Now it’s coming from that direction and it’s all radiation.

See him standing there?

Oh, you see him up there?

We got to walk from here on up.

Okay.

[Music]

Hey guys, the sinkhole is right over here.

Obviously, Thomas knows these guys picked up stuff
I thought you guys would be interested in seeing yourselves.

Wow, look at that.

Oh, Jim down in there.

How far does it go?

It goes down ways.

We get up there and there’s a hole in the ground.
And it’s kind of like a little cave,
and it’s big enough for three or four people to get down in.

This one is interesting just because air flows out of it
and things like that.

Yeah, you can feel it.

We’ve had a few people that have climbed down in that hole
and experienced some pretty extreme vertigo and nauseousness.

[Music]

The sinkhole is a spot that I found one day
when I was hiking up above Homestead 2.

And the thing that made it remarkable the first time I found it
was there is a cavity that continues down.

We’ve been trying to figure out how far down there it goes.

And it was just blasting cold air
just like an air conditioner.

Myself, as well as several other individuals that I was there to witness,
have had experiences when we climbed down inside that hole.

You know, I kind of shrugged it off as heat stroke at the time,
but then other individuals that we’ve taken up there since then
have experienced the same thing.

Jeff is with Simper,
and he’s measuring radio wave frequencies and things like that.

Travis and Casey are with Qual.
They’re doing a full radiation sweep.

All right.

We’re also, while we’re in there, looking for VOCs
and other chemicals such as nerve agents or toxic chemicals.

Okay.

And we actually got a really high hit on our VOC levels,
about 3,600 parts per billion,
which is a really high abnormality.

Dangerous level or just high?

Dangerous levels. Certainly.

That was a real quick hit.
It was almost as if there was a ventilation that plumed.

We got a reading off of that,
and then it disappeared.

It disappeared?

Really?

Yep.

That’s intriguing.

There are all sorts of volatile organic compounds
like formaldehyde, benzene,
but this sinkhole is pretty far away from anything man-made.

So their presence here is really strange.

The VOC level, I thought that was significant.
3,700 parts per billion.

It was very concerning.

Well, let me ask you this.
Did you take the RF meter down inside?

I haven’t been down in there yet.

‘Cause it’d be interesting to see
if you’re getting anything in there RF-wise.

What if I go down in there with you?

You guys think it’s safe to go down in there, right?

I mean, it wasn’t—
It was transient, right?

We’ll keep an air monitor with you
so we can make sure there isn’t any air displacement,
oxygen displacement.

All right.

Well, let’s go down in there and see.

We want to send in the O2 sensor first.
Makes the most safety sense.

I think that’s smart.
I like not dying.

I’ll jump in and make sure O2 sensor good.

I like having the air quality sensor in there first.
For sure.

[Music]

All right.
We got normal levels here.

So, all right.
Bring it on in.

Hop over there so you can see down inside of that.

Oh, yeah.

I don’t know.
Anyone brought a flashlight?

You can see you got one.
Your phone will work.

That’s what they’re made for, right?

Oh, wow.

You know, there’s no telling
how far that thing goes down in there.

If anything coming out of there,
you’re going to get it, right?

That’s right.

I did see a spike,
instantaneous spike at around 120, let’s call it.

And I’m seeing only background levels here.

But when I put the antenna down by the hole,
I clearly see some spikes forming.

I’ve got some peaks showing.

You sure do?

Yeah.

So, right at the opening.
Right at the opening when I put the antenna down in there.

Okay, Eric, we’re on preset number two.

Let me ask a question real quick, guys.
Do any of y’all feel swimmy at all?

No.

You good?

You feeling it?

Okay.

I don’t know.
Slightly I felt like I was not holding my balance well
for a second there.

That’s why I put my hand over on the rock.

And I’m feeling it now, too.

Any change in the oxygen level?

Yeah, that’s what I was wondering.

No, it was consistent.

Sure.

Shaky.

It’s weird.
Feels weird.

Yeah, my knees are starting to
actually kind of starting to tremble.

I’m feeling kind of shaky.

Are we safe to continue?

I am going to crawl out just in case.
I’m feeling kind of shaky.

It’s weird.

Watch your head.

That was weird.

I mean, I feel like
I just worked out and I didn’t eat before,
you know?

Feels weird.

Are any of you other guys feeling anything bad
down there at all?

No.

I just felt like I was going to bonk.

Dude, I tell you,
my phone battery just went.

Your battery is dead on your phone?

Yeah.

Huh?

Your battery is dead, too, ain’t it?

It shut off.

Clearly, something is in that hole
that made me have a weird,
like low blood sugar feeling.

And I don’t know what it was.

We have what we believe to be safe practices here,
but there are no guarantees here.

And no one knows that better than Tom.

You guys got all the measurements
that y’all plan to take up here, right?

We’ve got a good surveillance
of the entire ranch at this point.

We get back down to the truck,
we can dive into our results,
take a deeper look at that,
and then we can get some further analysis
and try to look at some deeper details.

Let’s go look at that.

I’m good for that.

Good to me.

Everyone be safe going down.

I’m convinced that whatever came over me
while I was down in that cave
had nothing to do with oxygen deprivation
or toxic gas levels.

Our oxygen meter was indicating
there was plenty of air.

But then all of a sudden
the batteries in our cell phones go dead.

Boom.
Just like that.

We’ve seen some stuff that we expected to see,
some stuff that we didn’t expect to see.

Our concern seems to be around
these underground emissions.

That’s where we’re seeing
the most of these phenomena.

We’re still going to be looking
for more holes to crawl into
and more things to dig into and look under.

And it’s possible we’ll uncover something
that’s dangerous.

Right.

Correct.

In some of the confined spaces,
those are areas you might want to be aware of
when you’re working in those areas.

But in the open spaces on the ranch,
nothing of concern.

It’s okay to walk around out here.

We’re not getting cooked,
but we might find some weird transient things.

Absolutely.

And in that hole,
there’s something that we can’t explain yet.

Right.

So, in summary, on the radiation exposures,
one of the things we haven’t figured out
across the entire ranch
is the exact levels of that.

So we brought something for you guys’ team
that’ll kind of watch you guys
on an individual level.

This is a dosimeter.

This is going to primarily work
from a radiological perspective.

If you’re getting above
the normal background radiation exposure,
we want to know.

It’s looking for stuff
that your body is immediately in.

So anything that’s really in the window
of harmful to humans
or impactful to humans,
our instrumentation sets will see.

Okay, guys.

So we’ll hand these out to you guys.

Travis, there’s yours.

Thank you, man.

Thank you.

Here’s yours.

These dosimeters will work
like a canary in a coal mine.

They’re going to be very helpful
in alerting us
if we run into any more sudden bursts
of harmful radiation.

We’ll lead you out
and escort you off the ranch.

Thank you again.
Appreciate all your time.

We’ll pack up our stuff
and we’ll be ready to roll.

Okay.

Sounds great.