The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch

The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch is a reality television series that follows a team investigating Skinwalker Ranch, located in Uintah County, Utah, United States. The show began airing on the History Channel in March 2020 and to date has run for four seasons. Season Five began airing on April 23, 2024.

Overview
The series is set at Skinwalker Ranch, a 500-acre ranch that is the site of purported paranormal and UFO-related activities, and follows a team of investigators and skeptics investigating the reports. Team members include Brandon Fugal, the ranch's owner, and aerospace engineer Travis S. Taylor.

The show features the team utilizing technologies such as ground-penetrating radar to investigate purported anomalies such as ionizing radiation, dire wolves, UFOs and cattle mutilation. The Pentagon UFO videos are also frequently featured. Guests on the show include SETI scientist Seth Shostak, journalist Linda Moulton-Howe, Colonel John B. Alexander, former Governor of Utah Gary Herbert, Utah senator Mike Lee, Attorney General of Utah Sean Reyes, Lunasonde CEO Jeremiah Pate, and others.

Season four premiered with Travis Taylor revealing that he had secretly been working as chief scientist on the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF).

Development
The series was developed by the producers of The Curse of Oak Island for the History Channel, which green-lit the show for air in 2019. The first season premiered on March 31, 2020, and ran for eight episodes, concluding on June 2, 2020. A second season was greenlit and began airing on May 4, 2021. Season 3 followed with more publicity on January 26, 2022. Season 4 premiered April 18, 2023. Season 5 will premiere April 23, 2024.

Reception
Author Jason Colavito characterized the myths about the ranch as "entirely a modern creation, fabricated in the late twentieth century". He described the Secret of Skinwalker Ranch series as "a slow-paced effort to reproduce Curse of Oak Island", a show that had been running since 2014 on the same network.

Science writer Russell Moul criticized the show as presenting no actual evidence to support claims about the ranch. According to Moul, "The show is presented as attempting to bring a scientific approach to prove the existence of all the things that have apparently occurred at the ranch. And while it may be very entertaining to watch and has caused much excitement on social media, the team have yet to provide anything to back up their supposed experiences."

Common Sense Media reviewer Stephanie Morgan criticized the show as unsuitable for children, saying that "the intention of the series is to create fear, sometimes by obviously staged scenes of people in peril. Pseudoscientific methods are presented as credible proof of paranormal activity. People carry guns and tell stories of encountering evil, other worldly beings". Morgan also criticized the experts presented by the show as "white men, many of whom take it upon themselves to 'explain' the history and beliefs of the Navajo and Ute Tribes in relation to the ranch".

Beyond Skinwalker Ranch
On June 6, 2023, the History Channel added a new series, Beyond Skinwalker Ranch, where investigators such as ex-CIA agent Andy Bustamante and journalist Paul Beban join Erik Bard, Travis Taylor, Dragon and Brandon Fugal to investigate ranches in other parts of the world and compare them to the one in Utah. The first season aired 9 episodes in 2023. A second season of 8 episodes began airing June 4, 2024.