Beyond Skinwalker Ranch: Orbs, Pukwudgies, and Sacred Chants

I don't watch a lot of paranormal TV shows, but I felt compelled to watch Beyond Skinwalker Ranch when I heard they filmed an episode here in Massachusetts. Pukwudgies, glowing orbs, and people wandering around a bleak wintry New England swamp? Count me in.

First, a little background. Skinwalker Ranch is a ranch in Utah where people have supposedly witnessed many strange phenomena over the years, like UFOs, Bigfoot, cattle mutilations, glowing orbs, and electromagnetic disturbances. The ranch is named after a type of legendary shape-shifting Navaho shaman, the skinwalker. Skinwalker Ranch has been the subject of books, movies and TV shows, including the History Channel's Secrets of Skinwalker Ranch. Beyond Skinwalker Ranch is a spin-off of that show, where paranormal investigators visit places that are not Skinwalker Ranch.

An illustration of a pukwudgie from Beyond Skinwalker Ranch

On July 18, Beyond Skinwalker Ranch aired an episode where two investigators, Andy Bustamente and Paul Beban, visit the Bridgewater Triangle in Massachusetts to find similarities between the weird phenomena there and what goes on at Skinwalker Ranch. The Bridgewater Triangle is an area in southeastern Massachusetts where a lot of strange phenomena have been reported, and was given its name by cryptozoologist Loren Coleman in the 1970s. I'm not sure when they filmed the episode, but Bustamente and Beban wear winter coats and you can see their breath, so I'm guessing sometime last winter or fall? I'm a sucker for anything filmed in the New England woods, particularly when the leaves are down, so I was hooked. 

Bustamente and Beban first visit three locations in the Triangle. The first is Skim Milk Bridge, an old Colonial-era stone bridge in West Bridgewater. The bridge was once part of a busy commercial route, but roads were rerouted and now it's part of a hiking trail in the woods. In 1916, a young woman went missing while canoeing, and her body was found under the bridge. There have been rumors since that time that the bridge may be haunted, but blogger Kristen Evans contacted me after reading this post and said the body may have actually been discovered at another bridge. 

Location number two is Anawan Rock, a large rock where Chief Anawan was captured by English colonists in 1676 during King Philip's War. Anawan was executed shortly thereafter. Much like Skim Milk Bridge, Anawan Rock is also said to be haunted. 

Finally, Bustamente and Beban wander into the Hockomock Swamp looking for pukwudgies, the small, hairy, magical humanoids that are said to lurk in the swamps and woods of New England. But before they head into the swamp, they talk with Raynham resident Bill Russo about his famous 1990 encounter with a pukwudgie. This is one of my favorite pukwudgie stories and is very creepy to hear. 

Andy Bustamente in Beyond Skinwalker Ranch

Do the Beyond Skinwalker crew actually find anything? They don't find a pukwudgie, but while walking around the swamp at night they do find an animal den which their infrared equipment shows to be very warm. They also hear something walking around and snapping branches. The investigators say this is strange, but maybe it was just a fox or a raccoon walking back to its cozy den? All of Bustamente and Beban's equipment also malfunctions at one point, leaving them with no recorded data. "No data is data," someone says at the end of the show. 

At another point, their equipment shows high levels of background radiation and their compasses all indicate that north is in different directions. I thought this was interesting, but a local resident who is with the two investigators expresses some concern about the high radiation. He raises a good point. Should people who live nearby be worried about radiation? No one answers the question, so I'm assuming they don't? 

The highlight of the episode is that they see two glowing objects in the sky. UFOs? UAPs? Call them what you will. They see the first one at Anawan Rock. Bustamente and Beban discuss playing some kind of Algonquin chant to summon the spirits haunting the rock, but since they don't have one handy they instead play a recording of a Hebrew religious chant that was used in an earlier episode. As the chant plays, a glowing object flies above them through the night sky. They insist it is not a plane, and although I suppose it could be a drone I was willing to suspend my disbelief. The weirdness of the situation was very appealing to me. Playing a Hebrew chant at a rock haunted by Algonquin ghosts to summon a UFO? It doesn't quite make any sense but seems very appropriate somehow for 21st century America. 

They see the other glowing object when they're out looking for pukwudgies. Again, it flies above them through the night sky, and this time one of the Beyond Skinwalker crew says the FAA shows no planes flying near them. This glowing object appears spontaneously without any Hebrew chanting. The crew doesn't get a pukwudgie, but does get another UFO, which is a good consolation prize. 

Overall, I enjoyed the episode. It was great to see some local people and locations on the show, and I liked seeing the UFOs, whatever they were. Did Beyond Skinwalker Ranch find any definite evidence of weird paranormal phenomena? Not really, and I doubt anyone ever will. By it's very nature, the paranormal can't be pinned down, categorized, or satisfactorily explained. That would just make it normal, not paranormal. It's the little hints at an answer, and the mystery itself, that keeps us watching these shows, and lures us into the New England swamps and woods.

Finding Bigfoot in Maine and New Hampshire

This month Animal Planet aired two episodes of Finding Bigfoot that were filmed right here in New England. I'm not a regular viewer of this show, but how could I resist these two episodes?

If you're not familiar with Finding Bigfoot, here's how the show works. The show has four Bigfoot experts (three true believers and one designated skeptic) who travel around the world searching for everyone's favorite hairy hominid. They meet with a group of locals who share their Bigfoot sightings, and then follow up with a few in-depth interviews/investigations. These usually include re-enactments of the sightings, complete with CGI Sasquatches running through the woods. Awesome!

  

The show's experts also go out into the woods, usually at night, and try to find Bigfoot. This involves lots of night-vision cameras, and people knocking on trees or making howls that supposedly sound like Bigfoot. Let's hope they don't accidentally issue a Bigfoot mating call.


In the episode "Maine's Bigfoot Event," the experts visit the Pine Tree state for the first time. They visit Loren Coleman's Museum of Cryptozoology in Portland. Loren Coleman was writing about weird monsters before the Finding Bigfoot experts were even born, and his museum looks like a lot of fun. I should really take a field trip up there one of these weekends!

 

After looking at Coleman's map of recent Bigfoot sightings the experts hold a town-hall style meeting with local residents. Dozens of people raise their hands when asked if they've seen a Sasquatch, and we see a few people tell their stories in more detail. I wonder how long these meetings last in real life? There's no such thing as a boring Bigfoot sighting, but I'm assuming the producers edit out the parts they think are dull.

On this episode we only get to see two re-enactments. In one, a couple feeding chickens behind their house see something large and hair run down a ridge. In the second, a father and son walking in the woods behind their house encounter a gigantic hairy humanoid. When shown how wide the creature's shoulders were, one of the experts says something like, "You saw a big stud." Again, let's hope no mating calls are accidentally issued.

The rest of this episode consists of the experts out in the woods looking for Bigfoot. One of the premises behind the show is that Bigfoot are just very intelligent animals that communicate with each by knocking on trees and howling. The experts try to lure Bigfoot out of hiding by knocking on trees and howling.

I don't think that Bigfoot is large undiscovered animal, but I do find it interesting that the show's experts usually get some kind of response, whether a distant animal cry or a mysterious knocking sound. The skeptic in me thinks that the woods are always full of noises if you listen hard enough, so it might just be coincidence that they often hear responses. The less skeptical part of my brain is reminded of seances, where the spirits communicate by knocking on tables or blowing out candles. There's always something lurking out there in the dark giving hints that it exists, but it very seldom shows its face.

I liked the Maine episode, but I loved "Grand Bigfoot Hotel" which was filmed in a lot of places I've been. The experts stay at the Omni Mount Washington Hotel, which I've stayed at and is famously haunted. They don't mention the ghost, but they do go wandering at night on the trails behind the hotel. I saw an otter and a huge woodpecker when I stayed there, but sadly the experts don't see Bigfoot.

The Mount Washington Hotel

The local re-enactments include a snowboarder who saw a giant thing walking through the snow, a couple who saw two Bigfoot shaking trees behind their house, and a couple who saw something weird cross the road in Franconia Notch. I've driven through the notch many times, and it is a very dramatic place with huge cliffs and unusual weather. Betty and Barney Hill were abducted by a UFO just down the road, so there's a history of strange things happening in that area.

The experts go looking for Bigfoot evidence near the Frankenstein Cliffs, another place I've visited, but I think the high point of the show is when they recruit a local alphorn player to wander in the woods with them to lure Sasquatch out of hiding. Alphorns are those gigantic horns they play in the Swiss mountains.

Calling for a Ricola or Bigfoot?

Did anyone really think that Bigfoot would show himself after hearing someone play a giant wooden horn? Of course not. But maybe that's not what this show is about.

I'll suggest that perhaps Finding Bigfoot isn't really about finding Bigfoot. Maybe it's really about giving local people across the country their 15 minutes of fame. Maybe it's about showing strange and interesting local places, like a big spooky hotel and a cool little museum. And maybe it's really about giving viewers hope that they too might glimpse a strange creature wandering through their own backyards.

The Only Thing Worse Than A Witch Hunt... A New Show About Salem Witches

I recently learned that a new show about witchcraft in Salem will be airing this spring. It's simply called "Salem", and will start on Sunday, April 20. Here's the trailer. Watch it in full-screen mode if you can, because the lighting is very dark.

I'll have to reserve my judgement until the show actually premieres, but the trailer gives me some mixed feelings.



First, the good feelings. I'm a horror fan, and the trailer is definitely creepy. Black magic? Pig monsters in the woods? Sign me up. More importantly, though, I'm excited to have a show about witchcraft in New England, and whether this show is good or bad I'll watch it. This area of the country has a rich folkloric heritage of magic and witchcraft, and I'm glad someone's drawing upon it for a TV show.

It also looks like they've tried to create some kind of authentic atmosphere, which I appreciate. So many films and TV shows about Salem witches are quite obviously not filmed in Massachusetts, but the brief glimpse of the town in the trailer gives me some hope the producers are trying to accurately recreate 17th century New England.

But obviously this show is not striving for complete historic accuracy, which is where I have mixed feelings. It looks like Ashley Madekwe plays a young, sexy Tituba, and all the actors have have good teeth and look really clean. When I watched the trailer again just now I was struck by how many people flash their pearly whites, but flouride, floss, and orthodontists just weren't available back then. I suppose Tituba may have been young and sexy, but it's not something the records indicate, and the people in 17th century Salem were probably dirty and pockmarked from various diseases. They were not the type of people a modern audience would want to watch in a show that promises "sensuality" and sexy witches. Well, at least most people wouldn't want to watch it.

"Salem" is made to entertain, so I can give the historical inaccuracy a pass, but the thing that makes me uncomfortable about this show is that in reality there were no witches in Salem. And this is where I have bad feelings. The tag line in the trailer is "The only thing worse than a witch hunt is a witch," which sound clever but just isn't true. Twenty-five people died as a result of the Salem witch hunt; zero people died because of witches. A witch hunt is much, much worse than a witch.

There are witches out there in the world. Some of them exist in folklore and fairy tales, some of them lurk in the deep archetypal recesses of our minds, and some of them are polytheistic nature worshipers who own herb shops in Salem. But none these witches can cast spells to make you sick, possess your children, or steal your spouse. They can't defy the physical laws of nature any more than you or I can.

Three hundred years ago the people in Salem didn't know this, or if they did they were too afraid to speak the truth. But we know this now and we shouldn't forget it, even when we get caught up watching a show with seductive witches and hideous monsters. So I'll watch "Salem", but I'll try to remember that history, with it's pogroms and massacres and witch hunts, is scarier than anything I'll see on TV.