The Science Behind Skinwalker Ranch w/ Kaleb Bench | Ghost City Podcast

A rocket climbs, a light appears, and the “normal” rules start slipping. We’re joined by Kaleb Bench from Secrets of Skinwalker Ranch to unpack what the team is actually doing when they say they’re running a scientific investigation and why they keep repeating the same experiments even when viewers think they have seen it before. When you only get 45 minutes on TV, context disappears fast, so we slow it down and follow the details.

We talk through the ranch’s core tools and why they matter: rocket launches as repeatable stimuli, drones as measurement platforms, GPS anomalies that suggest timing or signal interference, and Erik Bard’s Metaframe system designed to catch rapid changes in light that standard cameras miss. Caleb explains the infamous moments people argue about online, including drones that drop after their systems believe they “moved” a mile instantly, strange blue orb-like streaks near rockets, and LIDAR scans that show interference patterns unlike other sites the same experts map worldwide.

Then the conversation swerves into the stuff nobody expects, including a jawbone an expert matches to a juvenile direwolf and how “unknown DNA” results can be more about database limits than a clean debunk. We also get into the big, uncomfortable questions the data keeps forcing: is this human technology, a natural geophysical effect in the Uinta Basin, or something closer to non-human intelligence? And if the ranch reacts to energy, attention, and experiments, what does that imply about what’s watching and why it responds?

If you’re curious about Skinwalker Ranch, UAP research, UFO sightings, electromagnetic effects, and how real-world field science works when the target won’t cooperate, hit play. Subscribe, share this with a friend who loves the mystery, and leave a review with your best theory: what would you test next?

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Transcript

Technology Or Spiritual Encounters

Kaleb Bench 0:00

I've had experiences that I can categorize more as a to me, it seems more technological or technology is behind it. But then I've also had the experiences where I go, this to me fits more in a spiritual or um, you know, whatever word you want to use there, energetic or uh, you know, esoteric type experience.

Tim Nealon 0:30

All right, today on this episode of the Ghost City podcast, we actually have Caleb Bench here from with us from uh Skinwalker Ranch. Uh, for you guys that don't know, my name's Tim. Uh, I think most of you who are watching the show know me. Half you don't like me, the other half think I'm okay, and I'm okay with that. Um, but today we're gonna be talking with Caleb about what's going on at Skinwalker Ranch. Him and I were talking a little bit before uh we started recording. And it turns out that I think we're gonna have a lot of opportunity today to, I don't know if set the record straight is the right word, but uh a lot of you guys have questions about what's going on at Skinwalker Ranch and how things are working. And uh, you know, Caleb was expressing, you know, on the show they

Meet Caleb From Skinwalker Ranch

Tim Nealon 1:10

don't always have time to really go into that. I mean, because what is it, a 42-minute episode? Uh so hopefully today we'll be able to get into some of the nitty-gritty of this stuff you guys have always been wondering about and uh understand truly what is going on at Skinwalker Ranch. So welcome to the show, Caleb.

Kaleb Bench 1:26

Yeah, thanks for having me on. Excited to be here.

Tim Nealon 1:28

No worries. I'm always happy to talk to fellow weirdos who are into the weirdo stuff and and all that kind of stuff. But I'll be honest, this is the first, I think this is the first time we're interviewing somebody who has almost exclusive ties to a to a certain location, which is Skinwalker Ranch. And uh, you know, for for people out there who might not be familiar with what Skinwalker Ranch is or who you are, uh give us give us some details. Well, like what is this place?

Kaleb Bench 1:57

Yeah, so Skinwalker Ranch is a location that has a long history of reported UAP activity or UFO sightings. Uh, also a lot of cryptid type interactions with people that are on the property or reports of cryptids running around, say you're skinwalker, hence the name Skinwalker Ranch. Um, also lots of reported poltergeist type activity. Uh, just it covers a whole gambit, if you will, of just crazy experiences being reported by people who are on or near the property. The whole Uinta basin actually has a very long history um that we can actually re show some historical um dates going back to the 1800s from the earlier settlers and the army that was out here at that time. Um, and then obviously you have the the tribal history and the reports from that tradition going all the way back thousands of years. Um, there's I've actually been to some pretty neat locations in the basin with a very good friend of mine uh who's actually Shoshone, and we and we've just gone out and exploring a little bit, and he's shown me and taught me a little bit. Um, because we've we've had some pretty neat conversations because I kind of tie back to say the Celtic and Nordic traditions, because that's a lot of my ancestry, and doing that deep research into that, there's a lot of similarities, right? So just neat conversation that you can have when you have that open mind to kind of go down that rabbit hole, if you will. But um, yeah, I'm I'm Caleb Bench and I'm originally from Idaho. Um, little farm kid up there. Yes, my family did potatoes, right?

Tim Nealon 3:52

Um that's a real so that's a real thing. That's not just uh marketing ploy for Idaho.

Kaleb Bench 3:59

Um yeah, my uh my mom has a lot of the she's a salesperson and she actually has the contracts for um I want to say five guys was one of her big contracts, uh some pretty big uh names in the restaurant world that she actually is the one who supplies all those and gets them there. So nice. Um but I was in the military, I was uh I'm a U.S. Marine, uh, did that for six years while I was going to college, uh, did football and rugby and studied languages and

How Caleb Joined The Team

Kaleb Bench 4:30

history while in college. Um, stepped away when my dad ended up getting pretty terminal cancer and was running a family business at the time. So I left college to actually start making money and help with the family business. And that's end up when I ended up meeting my wife who is from here.

Tim Nealon 4:47

Okay.

Kaleb Bench 4:48

Um, and that's how my connection into the ranch really comes in because before that I'm never really big into the world, if you will. Right. I wasn't never the big um UFO guy or ghost guy or anything like that. It is, if you will, this kind of was thrust on me um and multiple of us on the team. Uh so when my dad died, uh that's when I kind of had this come to Jesus moment, if you will, and had uh some things happen and where I found my faith. Um and that led me down some other roads of learning. And I think that's really what set me on the path that put me on Skinwalker.

Tim Nealon 5:34

Uh-huh.

Kaleb Bench 5:36

Um, and it was kind of looking back, it's kind of neat, just like a preparatory mindset.

Tim Nealon 5:42

Yeah.

Kaleb Bench 5:43

Um, if you will, to then being uh asked to come out onto Skinwalkers. Uh my brother-in-law, Thomas Winterton, who's the ranch manager, um was asked to Yeah.

Tim Nealon 5:57

Yeah, I was gonna say I met Thomas. What was it? Yeah, at uh Paragon. Yeah.

Kaleb Bench 6:03

Yeah. Uh so he's the one who called me to ask if I'd like to help do some security on the ranch. Uh so my first day was Halloween 2017.

Tim Nealon 6:12

Okay. Um that's a hell of a day to start security at a spooky ranch, I bet. Um people trying to sneak in.

Kaleb Bench 6:18

And and obviously and prior to that, my knowledge of the ranch was very small. I'd heard it right or heard about um some stories here and there. Um, but nothing really stuck in my head, you know. It was kind of one of things I was like, uh, whatever.

Tim Nealon 6:33

Yeah.

Kaleb Bench 6:34

And then coming onto the ranch, that's when Tom started telling me some of the experiences that he'd had since he'd been on for about a year and a half at that point. Um, but you know, nothing really happened that night, which was a blessing and uh, you know, let down maybe.

Tim Nealon 6:52

So when we're talking about Skinwalker Ranch, like how big of a piece of property are are we talking?

Kaleb Bench 6:57

Uh it's 512 acres. Okay.

Tim Nealon 7:00

Now now so 512 acres for for everybody out there, that's almost a square mile, isn't it? Because I think 700 acres is roughly like kind of a square mile or something.

Kaleb Bench 7:09

Um it's actually depending on where where you're at on the property, uh-huh, it's it's a little bit longer in some areas and it is about a mile across uh in some of those locations, maybe a little bit further also.

Tim Nealon 7:25

Right. So the the first thought that would pop into my head is like 512 acres. I mean, that's a lot of land, but it at the same time it's not a lot of land, like in the grand scheme of things. So, so what is it about this area that that is causing all these phenomena, you know, UFOs, UAPs, you know, whatever you want to call them, ghosts, you know, uh skinwalkers, cryptids. How can all this be happening in 512 acres? Like that's a great question. You know, that's a lot.

Kaleb Bench 7:52

Yeah, we're that's honestly why we're doing what we're doing with the television show uh in conjunction with the scientific investigation.

Tim Nealon 8:02

Right.

Kaleb Bench 8:03

Because initially Brandon, the owner, Brandon Fugel, he didn't

Why Investigate With Science

Kaleb Bench 8:10

want people to know he was actually the owner of the ranch when he bought it from Bigelow in 2016. Uh, because he's always been, to my understanding, very interested in this topic. A lot of people are. Um, but he, due to his business connections, did not want people to know he was a part or the owner of it because it could shed some negative light in some of his business dealings. Um, but that's why we uh why he approached it the way he did with bringing Eric Bart on as his scientist and wanting to go through a scientific investigation side. Um, because it wasn't wanting to focus on woo-woo, if you will, or you know, some of the more esoteric topics. Uh, and even though, and that's where it's been really neat with Eric and Travis, is they have an open mind that will breach some of those topics or some of those different modalities, if you will. Um, for example, we're always asked about remote viewing and kind of mediums and and that kind of realm. But the problem with those is most of that that type of modality, there's no actual proof of going, hey, we did A and B and got C.

Tim Nealon 9:37

Yeah, there's no repeatability.

Kaleb Bench 9:39

Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Nealon 9:40

And when you say science, you know, one, I'm glad to hear that. Um, because I do think that, you know, I I know I irk a couple people every time I say this, but I do think that the paranormal community has kind of little went a little bit too far into the woo-woo, as you put it, you know, and I know that everybody has their own beliefs and their own reasoning for coming up with those beliefs. So I I try not to shit on any of them. So when you when you guys are saying you guys are doing science and scientific experiments, you know, I I'm I'm sure we could probably spend five episodes talking about what you're doing, but but in a nutshell, what what is your guy, what is your approach to science? And and and when you say science, what exactly are you are your are you testing or or how are you going about that?

Kaleb Bench 10:24

So the scientific method is essentially repeating experiments to confirm the data that you're getting. Right. You know, and setting those controls to where you know when you did A, B happened, and you get and you get C also, right? Yeah. Um, and that's my understanding and and my experiences the last eight years with helping and learning, because by no means I was a science person, you know, still really not. Um, and that's where I'm okay with you know exploring some of those other topics, but at the same time, uh my background in law enforcement and military, um I'm still very much categorize things right and

Rockets That Trigger UAP Activity

Kaleb Bench 11:10

try to identify the reason behind something, you know, and that's and that's really what we're trying to do. And that, you know, we and this kind of goes into that topic. We get a little bit of grief. Oh, you're always using rockets, you're always doing these things over and over again. Well, that's a scientific method.

Tim Nealon 11:24

Wait, you guys are using rockets? Right. Like, can I come visit? This sounds awesome. UFOs, cryptids, and rockets. Like, yeah, lots and lots of rockets.

Kaleb Bench 11:35

Um, well, and that's one of those things is a rocket is a uh form of kinetic energy, and a lot of what we're dealing with, we're testing different energy systems and getting crazy data. And we have these rockets that are very cheap to use and they're providing a lot of data. Um, and they've given us some of the best returns during the investigation over the last nine, 10 years, uh, from payloads that we're able to put on them, and then just behavior of these rockets that when they're going into certain areas, they're doing things that they shouldn't be doing. Um, one of the craziest ones is you see this in the show, and we shoot a rocket off in a location and it gets stuck in the air.

Tim Nealon 12:18

As in like it's just hanging there?

Kaleb Bench 12:21

Yeah, it literally pauses in the air for four to five seconds.

Tim Nealon 12:24

Uh-huh.

Kaleb Bench 12:26

And it it's doing this pendulum thing, and then it pauses and stops and hangs there for about two seconds and then it keeps going.

Tim Nealon 12:35

All right. So when it comes to this rocket stuff and the and the data you're collecting and even why you're launching these rockets, you're gonna have to talk to me like I'm a dummy because I think in this situation I might actually be a dummy. Um, like, like, so you know, I I understand the idea of launching rockets. Like, what are you what are you hoping to figure out? Like, I'm like, I'm gonna launch a rocket tomorrow. Like, that sounds cool. Um what are you what are you even trying to figure out by launching a rocket?

Kaleb Bench 13:03

Well, uh one of the first thing one of the first ideas with shooting the rocket was we had the information from prior owners and other individuals on the ranch that if you do unique or kind of one one-offs, you'll get reactions. And so the idea was hey, let's shoot a rocket off, see what happens.

Tim Nealon 13:26

Okay.

Kaleb Bench 13:27

And we shot uh the first rocket off, and we had a reaction that we were able to record and and it keeps happening.

Tim Nealon 13:34

Okay, so what was that reaction? What happened?

Kaleb Bench 13:37

It was uh uh a UAP in the in the sky appeared.

Tim Nealon 13:41

Okay, and for everybody who doesn't know UAP, it's unidentified unidentified aerial phenomena.

Kaleb Bench 13:46

Right. Which um if anybody who knows Jay Stratton, he's the one who coined that term and created it because he wanted to get away from the UFO term, because whenever you say UFO, everybody now instantly goes to little green men in a flying saucer, right? And so he wanted to create a new term to uh uh talk about these phenomena that are happening that we can't explain or you know that we can identify.

Tim Nealon 14:16

So and as far as I know understand, and and please correct me if I'm wrong, because I probably am, but a UAP, you're not even suggesting that it that it is a a craft or a ship of any kind necessarily. It could be a ball of light, it could be just just any uh abnormal thing that's happening in the air, uh essentially. Okay, yep. So you're not setting off rockets and attracting little green men, it's just you set off rockets and like strange shit just starts happening in the sky that you can't identify.

Kaleb Bench 14:46

So uh for instance, this the season seven is currently releasing, has been for the last couple weeks. And last year, during a bunch of our rocket launches, we were having these little blue orbs or streaks of light that were going very near these rockets, and the parachute cord was being cut, but it was in mid-air, and these are little cardboard rockets, and that's 500-pound cord. Yeah, but it didn't look like a traditional cut, if you will, and it happened multiple times, so there was something interacting with these rockets and doing something we hadn't seen before, and we were taking these rockets apart and ensuring that they were ready to go, and and a lot of them were brand new. And so, what is this? What are these lights flying across the sky and cutting these parachute cords?

Tim Nealon 15:50

Yeah, I was gonna say if you guys are using paracord, I mean that's that's pretty strong material.

Kaleb Bench 15:55

Um we were talking, you see, if you pull a um actually put those uh ropes under tension and pull them and break them, there's a certain way those fibers look.

Blue Orbs And Cut Parachute Cords

Kaleb Bench 16:10

Right. Right. And then and if you go cut them with the scissors, there's a certain way they look, or if you burn them or whatever, but there was none of that traditional damage done to these cores. It was just nuts.

Tim Nealon 16:23

Yeah, I don't I don't even know.

Kaleb Bench 16:24

And this is happening in the sky above us, real time, to multiples of rockets in conjunction with these blue lights that are cutting across the sky and that look like little orbs, you know, and they're uh again, they're blue, and we caught multiple of them. And Eric created uh what he calls um metaframe, and that's how we're actually able to catch some of these events in the sky. Okay, because they're happening so quick, um, and it's based off of light.

Tim Nealon 16:55

So the the the metaprame is it just uh like a high frame rate way of capturing, or like what is that?

Kaleb Bench 17:02

Well, I don't want to slaughter it, but it's detecting changes in the light spectrum, okay if I remember correctly. And you're seeing the system work in real time. So Eric will have it in one of our camera systems pointed in a certain direction, and any change in the light spectrum, near or far, it kind of paints this trail. So he's got all these amazing videos and pictures where you can see birds, you know, and you and that you can see every movement that they're making as they're making their little trail across the the camera. Right. Um, if a tree moves at the slightest, you'll see little variations in the in the light spectrum. And um but it's really neat. And he created that because of what we were what we caught a couple of years ago, yeah. Uh in a high speed camera and during some of our other experiments and the and some of this other equipment that we've been using. And he was going, okay, how can we catch some of these events that we're not catching with the equipment we have? And so we created uh Metaframe and it paid off.

Tim Nealon 18:19

I th I think that's one of the most fun things about you know, I'm and I'm I know not everything going on there is quote unquote paranormal. Well, I guess so, because paranormal is just beyond normal, right? But is is the idea of like coming up with new ways to document what we're experiencing because a lot of times, you know, it uh to dumb it down, like it's easy to to record you and I talking. We already have the tools for that. But how do you document something that you you don't even know exists? Like that that is such a fun aspect of this for me. Um I and I don't I don't think you're gonna have an I don't think you're gonna have an answer to this question. But but but what what do you even think that is? Because like in my mind, like I I would start to notice, you know, what you guys are noticing, right? Like these little blue, blue lights or orbs going through the sky, the the cords being cut, and I'd be like, okay, that's really weird. But what's the next step? Like, because there I would imagine you guys probably have no idea what this is, or at least at the time when you first experienced it. You definitely did not have any idea what that is. How do you even start narrowing it down where you're like, okay, I think it could be this, I think it could be that? Because one, it's it's something that we don't know. Two, it could be it sounds like it'd be I I wouldn't even know where to start. I guess I guess that's what I'm getting at is how do you guys figure out where you're gonna start with these scientific experiments?

Kaleb Bench 19:38

I I think that's actually one of the really fun and cool things that you see with the television show is if you go back to season one and really pay attention, we were at that point of where do we even start? What do we even what are we even looking for?

Tim Nealon 19:54

Yeah.

Kaleb Bench 19:54

Because when Eric came in, he wanted to really just do more of an observational study at that point. Um, and based on some of the things that caught his attention or some of the different circumstances and some of the different experiences that we reported back to him or that he had, that led him down to some of these tracks that you're kind of you're seeing the evolution of that scientific investigation real time now. Sure. Um, for instance, one of the first things Eric did was he went and got GPS counters, little cheap things that farmers will put on the cow's ears, and he put pairs of these in different locations of the ranch.

Metaframe And Capturing Fast Events

Kaleb Bench 20:40

And they're really long dwell time type GPSs. They're not really updating real time, you know, every second or whatever. It was maybe every 20 minutes or something. Okay. But what he's found was these GPSs would show that they would move up to a mile away. But these tags and uh and both pairs would move a lot of times, or one would move and the other would stay. Um, but but they're not tags were nailed into fence posts. Uh on they a pair was nailed on our on the back deck of the command center. Uh two were uh located inside homestead two, and those ones were the ones pair that moved almost a mile and a halfway to the south.

Tim Nealon 21:30

But they're not physically moving, obviously. They're just something's interacting with the the signal between the transmitter and the receiver, essentially.

Kaleb Bench 21:39

Yep. And that's what started leading us down this road of well, what other equipment with GPS can we get out here and see what happens and see if GPS in all these cis different systems reacts the same way, which again, we found tons of this information. And that's where uh again one of the tools that we're using is Sky Elements and these these drones that they come out, and that's where when people really understand the information and what we've learned just from those drones, right, is phenomenal.

Tim Nealon 22:15

Yeah.

Kaleb Bench 22:16

And that's where tonight on the episode that's coming out, we found something in the data that, according to science, cannot happen. Right.

Tim Nealon 22:27

Yeah.

Kaleb Bench 22:28

And people are always going, why do they keep bringing these drones out? We've seen this before. Because you're not seeing it, and you're probably not understanding all the data that we're getting from these and what we're measuring.

Tim Nealon 22:40

Yeah, because there's a part of me, even as we're talking, like I understand, you know, obviously what you're saying and what you guys are doing, but there's almost like I don't see the goal. Like, you know what I mean? Like, as we're talking, like, you know, because you guys are doing these experiments, you guys are trying to use the scientific method to figure out what is going on here. But at the same time, you know, even as you were like describing the GPS coordinates, like you know, seemingly moving and stuff, it's like, okay, that's that's cool, but like what are you working towards? Like, what is it that you're trying to figure out? You know, because even with the drones and and I've seen a couple of episodes of the shows, actually, quite a few. And and and I'm assuming it's because you know, TV's TV, it always kind of leaves you with this idea. It's like, okay, I understand that they're trying to figure out all these abnormal things that are happening on this property and you know what's really going on here, but but but what is your real goal here? Like, because sometimes if sounds sometimes I get the feeling it's like you guys know that you're trying to figure something out, but you but and and by the way, this is not an insult at all, but you're it's like you're still trying to figure out what it is you're trying to figure out.

Kaleb Bench 23:47

Uh so um, and that's where you know, just again using that as an example for the GPS. Uh, thanks for kind of bringing it back to the the question. What am I doing?

Tim Nealon 23:57

No, you're fine. I didn't do that on purpose, by the way. I suck as a podcast now.

Kaleb Bench 24:00

So like all good, no worries. Um it we are trying to figure out what is causing it. So is that a near peer? Uh-huh. Because is this some kind of technology that either our own government or uh again a near peer has? And if that's it, why is it here or being used on Skinwalk Ranch? Is it non-human intelligence or NHI, right? Uh what is causing that? And that's what we're trying to answer is is this human-caused or is this not human-caused? Is this some kind of natural phenomena that science hasn't been able to explain or is new? Um, and we just don't know what it is. Yeah. And that's where we're that's the whole point is going, okay, what's causing

GPS Glitches And Drone Data

Kaleb Bench 24:50

this? You know, is this um the one of the jokes is is this the old man on Scooby-Doo with the hiding behind the mask, right?

Tim Nealon 24:59

Right.

Kaleb Bench 25:00

And we're trying to unmask him.

Tim Nealon 25:01

Yeah.

Kaleb Bench 25:02

Or is this a legit skinwalker running around? Or is this some other, you know, legend or or cryptid that we're tracking, right? We are trying to find out what is causing this.

Tim Nealon 25:19

Yeah.

Kaleb Bench 25:20

Uh, and then and but that's where I'll I'll put it this way is I've had experiences that I can categorize more as a to me, it seems more technological or technology is behind it. But then I've also had the experiences where I go, this to me fits more in a spiritual or um, you know, whatever word you want to use there, energetic or uh, you know, esoteric type experience. I I've had a full gambit and I kind of joke with people about the only things or experiences that I I haven't had on the ranch yet is seeing a skinwalker or a little green man running around.

Tim Nealon 26:01

Not yet.

Kaleb Bench 26:02

Yeah, not yet.

Tim Nealon 26:03

Um you know what's interesting about that, you know, especially from the UAP perspective. Um, you know, and and you're talking about like, do we do like is this technology? Is this natural forces? Like you're you're still trying to figure out what that is. Um but you know, I I think one of the things that is happening in the world today is the idea that more and more people or are either accepting or becoming more and more open to the idea that there is a lot about the world that we do not understand. I mean, the even what's what's going on with our government right now, like with the the the alien stuff. Like, I don't know what's true, what's not, you know. And actually, I for years I was one of the people that's like, I don't I don't believe in aliens. I don't believe in like I do believe there's life out there. I think you'd be crazy not to, but I don't think that it's been here. But then I was like, well, maybe it's interdimensional, maybe it's this, maybe it's that. And now you have the government, at least some people that are saying, no, we have like non-human intelligent life forms that we've collected, we have their bodies, and these whistleblowers are coming forward with all these, you know, we we've actually uh reverse-engineered spacecraft, all this stuff. And yeah, yeah, honestly, I sit here wondering, like, I don't know what to believe. I mean, they seem like credible people, but if nothing else, I think that what all this is doing is making people start to understand that that there is a lot more to this world that we don't understand. And I think you guys are just kind of dipping your toes in that a little bit, you know.

Kaleb Bench 27:27

Yeah, you're you're hitting on a couple different topics. Uh, one, um, I think because the the West, especially the mindset of the West, the last hundred to two hundred years has been so focused, say, on the religion of science, because that's what it is too.

Tim Nealon 27:45

Right.

Kaleb Bench 27:45

Because you'll have these people who discount everything except what is considered accepted science, and they throw everything else out, uh, I which I think isn't helping anybody. Um, and I I personally believe that's what's destroyed some people's ability to accept or question some of these more esoteric or these other modalities, if you will, these different topics, they won't even open their mind to it. And I think that is just as ignorant, if you will, as um, you know, you know, I I think is very damaging to that, yeah, to the ability of moving forward and actually asking good questions and doing good investigations and really finding out what's going on, right? Because for hundreds or thousands of years, humans all over the world were accepting and and still do accept that there's things that we can't see as humans, and it's interacting with us. Science, and this is where there's a lot of crossovers, where so like we're just energy, right? We're a more solid form of energy, but at the end of the day, we're still energy. And and that's where I'm a very big person into um like uh uh Napoleon Hill and Tony Robbins and these individuals that talk about you know mastering your mind and your emotions. Yeah. And and I very much do believe that what we're doing with the investigation, we're we're having those types of conversations. Um, and that's been one of the parts of the investigation that is fun for us because we talk about the what-ifs when we're in the middle of experiments in the last couple of years, those what ifs have turned into realities, yeah. And we're going, did we somehow affect that? Which more and more science is going, yeah, there's the observer uh the observer effect. We are interacting, and and our consciousness is doing things to the experiment, yeah. You know, and and lots of crossover.

Tim Nealon 30:01

Yeah.

Kaleb Bench 30:02

Uh and for me, uh again, I'm uh practicing my faith and the books that I read, it talks about this type of stuff. You gotta kind of have an open mind and actually see it. But it's there, yeah, it's been there for thousands of years.

Tim Nealon 30:18

Well, even as we make more advances, like you know, I know quantum physics, especially in our world, you know, the paranormal, that world word is thrown around way more than it should be. Um, at least in my opinion, because half the time when people say like quantum physics, I don't really even think they know what they're talking about. Um, but you know, I read a study the other day that these quantum physicists, was it the right word? Physicists? I think so. Um, they were showing how particles that are happening or are in motion today can actually change the past. And when I read that at first, I was like, that's seems ridiculous. But I read about it and my feeble little mind was actually able to make sense of it. And then you the then your mind starts spiraling in all these other possibilities. It's like, wait a minute, okay, if it's possible that things are happening today that are changing the past, which on the surface seems insane, right? Like the past is done. How can you change what's already done? But they're proving that it can be done. Then you start reading all these other articles and you start realizing that the like the like I said before, there's just so much we don't understand that you know, maybe our minds were not capable of processing it at one time. Maybe, you know, it's just the evolution of knowledge, right? You know, the more we learn, the more we realize there is to learn. I don't know which one of those things are at play, but yeah, it it it's a terribly fun subject to get onto, you know, this idea of you know what is actually happening.

Human Tech Or Non-Human Intelligence

Tim Nealon 31:40

Um and and you know, I I I I think that you guys are doing it the right way because I I think at the same time, this is gonna be getting me a little bit of trouble, but that's okay. I think there's a lot of people that are doing it the wrong way and and they think that it's science. Like, for example, I'm gonna pick on paranormal investigators, ghost hunters, for example. Uh, not the show, just people that call themselves ghost hunters. You know, they walk into an environment and they have a K2 meter, and in their mind they're doing science. Like that's not science, like that's just an observation. And by the way, you don't even know what you're observing, but they'll they'll they think that they're approaching things from a scientific manner. Um and not to oblivate here, but the other thing that gets on my nerves is when people take things that they don't understand and they start layering it with more levels of things that they don't understand as an explanation for things like Bigfoot's a good example of this, and um because I you know, I know I told you I was gonna bring it up. So by the way, I could be wrong, throwing that out there. I think Bigfoot is is real, and I think it's just a biological creature, but then people start throwing things on top of it, but and by the way, that's hard enough to prove as it is, because if this is a real animal that's very elusive, I mean, it there's already a big challenge ahead of us proving that this thing is real. But what people do is all of a sudden they say, Oh, well, uh, it seemed to disappear. And in my mind, I'm like, well, that's because it's an apex predator who's really good at hiding and it knows its environment very well and it knows how to make itself invisible. But people go, Well, no, it has invisible invisibility cloaks and it moves in and out of portals and all these other things. And and I'm not saying that's wrong, but they're wrong, um, in my opinion. Because but what happens is you like once again, you take these things that that are already difficult to explain or paranormal, and instead of trying to approach it from a logical perspective with what you guys are doing, you know, we want to understand what's going on here. They'll just start throwing things at it. Oh, well, it it's going through portals. One, do you have any idea how much energy is required? And I looked into this to actually create a portal for an animal the size of a Bigfoot to walk through. There is no energy source on Earth that can do that, but somehow Bigfoot's doing it. And I I guess it's just my way of ranting and giving you guys credit at the same time. It's I I as somebody who's in this field, ghost Bigfoot, you know, UFOs a little bit, all this stuff. I really wish people would take the approach that you guys are taking more often. I realize not everybody can launch rockets, but that's pretty fucking cool when I'd like to start launching rockets to see what happens. But um, you know, it it it is good that you guys are approaching it this way, you know, because uh even if you don't know what you're after, eventually you're gonna get something. And then when you do get that something, you know at least it's grounded in reality and not, you know, well, Bigfoot seemed to disappear. He must be a master of quantum physics and be walking through portals, even though they don't know how to make fire. Um, yeah, that's kind of backwards, but anyways.

Kaleb Bench 34:41

Well, you know, that's uh so we haven't really ever gone down the Bigfoot route on the ranch. Um and I told you I told you that there's an interesting tie-in here because so one of the experiences that I've had, and I I over the eight last eight, nine years that I've been involved with on the ranch, we always get asked, you know, what's our scariest moment, what's our most exciting moment, you know, and it's really hard to choose. But one of my experiences

The Predator Night Cloaked Object

Kaleb Bench 35:10

that I've had on the ranch is Travis and I interacted with an object where I had my pistol out. Uh I felt like we were being watched initially. We'll set the scene for you.

Tim Nealon 35:24

Um we're by the way, skinwalker ranch is sounding more and more fun fun all the time. Like we got rockets, now we have guns. We have like right.

Kaleb Bench 35:34

And this and so and I'll I'll get to the Bigfoot stuff, but yeah. We essentially have this interaction with a rectangular object, is what I saw. And it had paneling on it. So when my gunlight swept across it, and I centered on the on the on center mass and was going through the thought process, I saw all this this reflection, I saw what appeared to be two figures reflecting back at me, and it real and I realized it was Travis and I's reflection off of whatever this was. And as I'm sitting here in that moment thinking, do I pull the trigger? Is this an actual threat to me? It disappears.

Tim Nealon 36:18

Okay.

Kaleb Bench 36:19

I don't know if it closed in on itself or rotated, but Travis and I both had the distinct feeling that it ran up the mesa. It like went through a canal, went through all this sagebrush. I I'm 6'2. I'm not small, I'm not a small person, and some of the sagebrush is taller than I am. And if something's running through that, you're gonna hear it. There was no sound, we went through, there were no tracks. So was it something messing with our mind? Or was it some kind? And this is one of the experiences I had that I also I honestly put in more of a technological space of whatever this was, was some kind of technology. Um, but we both had that distinct feeling that it went up the Meso, so we went tearing off running after it. Um and I remember running across the bridge and Travis like grabbing me, oh, we don't know what this is, let's slow down. Yeah, you know. Um, and then I've seen a cloaked craft over the ranch. Um that's a whole nother story, but had the same uh very similar outline or very similar structure. Um, but it it reminded me and the description of what it what we saw that night. Two years later, there's this um we do a there's a conference here in Vernal called Phenomicon, and there was a Bigfoot group from Washington and Oregon that came down and they showed a video to Eric. And they all the way you you can tell, um uh you know, as an LEO, I do interviews, I I talk with people, and you can tell when people believe are telling you the truth, and you know, there's those little things that you can see that you know that, and these every one of this group, there's like five or six of them, were going, we were out looking, and we're all out there in this location out in Oregon or Oregon, Washington, up in the mountains somewhere, and they all see this giant creature running through the forest. And one of them had their camera and was like, Yes, we got it, we got it, we got it, we got it. They go back and watch that footage. It's not a big two-legged creature that's running through the forest, it's a cloaked object.

Tim Nealon 38:48

Okay.

Kaleb Bench 38:49

Eric brings that to me, the video, has me watch it, and it goes, Is this the same effect you saw on the craft and the thing you interacted with the night with Travis? I was like, Yes. Very much the same cloaking, light reflecting, right, light refracting, whatever you want to call it, right, effect.

Tim Nealon 39:10

Yeah, I and I've seen a couple videos like that too. And you know, not not I don't think I would have seen the ones you have, and I definitely didn't see anything that happened at your ranch. But I've I've seen a couple like that, and like I will admit that they're strange, like you know, because it does look like a figure moving through the woods. And what was that movie?

Kaleb Bench 39:29

Was it Terminator or Predator or something where it kind of had like that that's what that's kind of what Travis and I actually kind of nicknamed that uh interaction that night was the Predator Night. And but at the end of that video, it actually turns into an orb and flies away, yeah, or ball of light. And that was one of the things that caught Eric's attention was because, like you were pointing out, there's those reports where people are watching this or interacting with a Bigfoot and it turns into an orb of light, goes and zips off or something. Um, so that made Eric go, okay, wait a minute, because some of the experiences and things that we're having happen on the ranch, we know that there's strange magnetic energies moving through the ranch. And if you get exposed to enough magnetic energy, it messes with your mind.

Tim Nealon 40:20

Yeah.

Kaleb Bench 40:20

Eric or uh Travis loves telling a story where when he was in college, there were some individuals in their engineering department that had these giant magnets. And they're and he says, I can neither confirm nor deny that there was maybe alcohol involved. Well, but these college students go walk in in there and they put their head between those magnets, and it was, and that's when he uh it sounded like they just went dumb, like just wipe their mind, and they're just like get stuck between those magnets, and someone had to grab them and move them. And so we're seeing that same type of effect in people at times, where again, we're we're having people report that they are hearing voices or hearing things. I have had this happen to me when I was on Mesa doing a foot patrol one day, where I heard what I would swear was native ceremonial drums and chanting singing. And there was no uh, you know, there's no pow wow going on over in Fort Duchesne. There's no explanation for me hearing that. So, one, is that going on in my head? Or two, am I hearing that from an external source? Right. But then the other question is okay, was I being exposed to some kind of uh radiation or some kind of energy that was making me think I saw that? And coming back to the Bigfoot thing, um, if there's say some kind of NHI or some kind of being or intelligence that we're interacting with, and say they have a lot more information than we do, what if they're keen on this deep-rooted DNA fear from humans 10,000 years ago when they're out there interacting with cave bears that are 15 feet freaking tall, or dealing with giant apes that are 10 feet tall or mammoths, you know. So there's this deep-rooted fear that little ancestor of Caleb was out running around dealing with and going, Oh, well, there's no way I'm gonna stand here with my stone spear and fight this freaking cave bear. I'm running.

Tim Nealon 42:33

Yeah. Well, also in my mind, I also think like, you know, when it comes to that kind of stuff, you know, going using Bigfoot as the example. Not that we have to, you know, go on and on about that, but you know, let's say they'd have the ability to like change into an orb and and fly away and and stuff like that, which I I you know, I have to be honest with myself. I can't when people have reports like that, I don't want to say, oh well, that person is crazy. They don't know what they're talking about because I wasn't there. I I don't know what they're experiencing, but I truly believe that it's uh just biological animal.

Kaleb Bench 43:08

Well, and and that's where is it some kind of defense mechanism that they're using and messing with their minds like that, right? That that is it's just something to think about, right? Yeah, because we that's

LIDAR Scans And The Bubble

Kaleb Bench 43:20

that's where there's kind of this interesting tie in there because Eric, Eric and Travis will tell you they're the first ones that don't give a damn about Bigfoot.

Tim Nealon 43:28

Right.

Kaleb Bench 43:28

Um and but it it's just that's where it crosses over for us on the investigation is talking about those types of questions and those going what the what ifs, yeah, and and trying to run that down to the ground. So I I would say uh an um and a piece of equipment that we've used that kind of ties into the Bigfoot thing is Pete Kelsey brings his LIDAR systems out. And this is how we're painting different energies on the ranch, if you will, and different energetic signals. Or potential interference with the machines because Pete Kelsey and the SLAM scanner that we use. I've I've I've you know he's trained me up on using a lot of this stuff. So a lot of times during our experiments, I'm helping him run the LIDAR systems and the SLAM scanners. You watch the episodes. I have this backpack on my back. That's what it's running these light scans essentially, creating a 3D image of the ranch. We have hundreds of these scans, and he does this worldwide. And this is the only place. Well, there's one other location that he's gotten weird interference or caught something in the data, but it's very unique to the ranch. He's uh and Pete again, he's been all over the world. He's done the USS Texas, he's done um uh Alcatraz. He he he gets brought in to go in and paint these areas, if you will, and create these three new models for records. Um, but he's getting these strange data in the in his scans on the ranch, and it's going, okay, is this showing us something that we're not seeing and not understanding? And it's because of the light interaction or the mess or messing with time, which is really crazy.

Tim Nealon 45:19

Yeah.

Kaleb Bench 45:19

Um, what is it? What's what's doing that? But that's what's been very cool. Again, when we brought him out in season two, he's pointed us down an entire track of the investigation that really helped us paint what we're calling the bubble, you know, and and this, and we were able to measure it this year, and and so a lot of really cool information based on those technologies that we're bringing out. And it's very much tied to these different interactions or experiences that we're having, and we're going, okay, what's energy is going, you know, doing this.

Tim Nealon 45:53

Well, the lidar thing, I I I I know this is not common practice, but I did watch a video one time, and this was a couple years ago before AI, so I don't think it was fake. They took a lidar system. I want to say it was uh actually, I don't remember, but it was it was a huge haunted prison. And they essentially did what you were describing, like they kind of, I don't remember if it was a backpack or handheld or whatever, but they walked around the prison and kind of mapped, you know, the prison. And lo and behold, and when they went back to look at the results, there were things in there that looked like people. Like, like I don't want to say ghosts or anything, but I guess maybe you could assume that those were ghosts, and they were not expecting that at all. They actually thought they were just, I think they were like like somebody that was part of a show that they just wanted to get a good map of the prison so that as they were doing the investigation and they were getting people, like what looked like people, ghosts, like in this LiDAR scan.

Kaleb Bench 46:43

Um, and that's so like me hearing that, I know that in effect, because we'll get this in the scans, is what he what it's called ghosting, where you'll see figures in the scans, but we can identify that as okay, that was that PA over there, or that was the producer over there, or oh, that one was me standing by that truck in that scan. Yeah, but same thing is we do get those crazy um identifiable results in areas that there shouldn't be anything there, yeah, and and that distances that the machine won't shouldn't be picking up. Yeah. So, and that again comes back to okay, is this something messing with the timing of the machine? Because you know, you're sending this laser out, it's supposed to hit, and there's the math formula of when it goes out, it hits, comes back to the receiver. But then if it's timing, then it thinks something's messing with the laser going out and making it think yeah, that it's out further than what it actually is coming back, or vice versa. Uh, so that's those questions is you know, you I hear that and I go, okay, Mike, and that's one of the things I first ask is okay, can you identify if there was someone standing there and you get that ghosting in the person? Or is this a legit? No one was there. We walked by the room. This is how we did it. There was no one there.

Tim Nealon 48:02

Right. Yeah, that that stuff's weird. And by the way, guys, I was gonna say, we maybe we need to get a lidar detector, LIDAR uh machine for when we go back to Oregon. Like start looking for Bigfoot with LIDAR.

Kaleb Bench 48:14

Um, and then Pete, he was actually uh uh Pete was also invited uh by Expedition Bigfoot to come do scans in areas where they're looking for Bigfoot. Yeah, and he helped do a uh breakdown of some of the video using some of this technology that he's aware of where they were able to really clean up that that one video from the 60s. Oh, the Patterson Give that that was a female, yeah. You know, and so Pete he it's kind of fun. There's a little tie-in there that he's helped with that investigation using LIDAR to help answer potentially some of his questions. Um so that's the fun part is there's so many interconnections and seeing the technology used in ways that was never really thought of, yeah, but it gets really interesting results.

Tim Nealon 49:05

Well, a lot of the times the technology doesn't exist because we don't even realize these are phenomena that exist. It's like, why would you create a piece of technology for detecting something that we we don't even know happens? But then when you guys start seeing things like little blue lights and the cords cutting and all these other weird things, that's when it's like, okay, we don't have the technology to understand what that is. So now we have to figure out how to build the technology to understand what that is.

Kaleb Bench 49:29

Um and that's been a again, one of the things or um circumstances I'll point to with the investigation in in the television show is you see us go through that

Dronegeddon And GPS System Gaps

Kaleb Bench 49:40

process of going, hey, what can we bring out here to help us maybe narrow this down? And you see these new tools getting introduced and then and better equipment or better technology. Um, and again, Sky Elements is a great example of the the program that they've created based on what is happening on the ranch. So their drone flights, because they're flying thousands of drone flights a month all over the US, and it's all about safety for them. You know, you can't have a four-pound brick fall out of the sky and hit somebody.

Tim Nealon 50:17

Right. Oh, it takes the fun out of it. That's exactly what I'd use drones for.

Kaleb Bench 50:23

And and that's where when you go back and watch a in season five, when we have 300 drones fall out of the air on top of us, Sky Elements is freaking out because under when you understand the capabilities of their system and how it's designed, something made 300 drones think that they teleported a mile away instantaneously outside of their safety zones. And that's and that's what sent a kill command for them to fall out of the sky on top of us.

Tim Nealon 50:56

Well, that goes back to the GPS thing, right? Because I think that though they use GPS to understand their boundaries, right? The drones.

Kaleb Bench 51:02

Yeah, and that that was one of the um topics very much was the GPS in those drones. And this was one of the topics that History Channel said they want to play, but we we've told people we're gonna talk about them in in places like this. So Sky Elements was in the process of updating all their drones that year, where a lot of their older drone systems or individual drones only had the American and European GPS systems in them.

Tim Nealon 51:35

Okay.

Kaleb Bench 51:36

They were going through updating those to have all four of the major GPS constellations, which included the Chinese and the Russian GPS systems? When they went back and looked at the information embedded in the drones and in the system after those drone after Drona Geddon, they found that every drone that fell out of the sky only had the American and European systems, they didn't have the redundancies of the Chinese and Russian systems. So the question was does Russia and China know of something that we don't know or haven't accepted yet in the West and harden their systems? But what and so whatever it was that sent that kill command and interrupted with the system and messed with the time in the system and also went into a pre-programmed flight and messed it up. What what did that? Who did that?

Tim Nealon 52:38

Yeah.

Kaleb Bench 52:39

And when you start thinking how dangerous that is in relation to all our weapon systems are based on in GPS, all our defense systems are based in GPS. So if they can mess up all your commercial airlines, drones think they're half a mile away, what could they do to a missile?

Tim Nealon 52:55

Yeah. Or like I said, like commercial jetline, you know, jets and you know, planes and stuff with hundreds of passengers. You know, like that would be kind of scary. Like where right? Like the pilot would be like, where did Detroit go? Um, meanwhile, they're over the lake and can't find it.

Kaleb Bench 53:11

Um and and that's one of those things we're trying to figure out is is this a who? Is this a what that is doing that?

Tim Nealon 53:19

Well, I also think the other important question is why? You know, exactly. Like, like why is this happening? You know, and and by the way, are are people doing this? Or is this, you know, you know, like one of the things I read about Skinwalker Ranch is like, and and you can verify if this is true or not, but there's there's a lot of writings out there on the internet. We all know how that goes, where like they think like the geology in that area is very different, and somehow that's impacting, you know, the the energy, whether it's you know GPS or which isn't energy, but you know what I mean, like impacting the GPS. Or uh can you shed some light onto that? Like, do you think that there's any evidence that that Skinwalker Ranch is geologically different than other areas, and that might be playing a factor into what you guys are seeing?

Kaleb Bench 54:03

So the Uinta basin overall is unique in the in North America. When you look at

Geology, Mesa Drilling, Strange Materials

Kaleb Bench 54:10

in most of um, I would say actually, when you go through and look at all other mountain ranges in the US, they are all north to south. The Uinta Mountains are east to west. Their orientation is different than other areas in the country and in North America. Um, and the basin is a big bowl, and Skinwalker Ranch is located in the center, smack dab in the center. And so one of the ideas um that Travis actually brought forward was is this a meteor or some kind of impact site? Um, because there's some elements that uh I guess they've found. I'm trying to remember what they are. It's been a couple of years since I've heard them. Uh, I want to say selenium, um, but we've found certain minerals on the ranch and in the area that kind of point to a possible impact site. And then that and then that goes back to the the drilling exercises that we're doing in the Mesa. We're pulling out uh fossilized aquatic material that was burned thousands of years ago or millions of years ago. Um, and then that leads us to finding this ceramic-like material that uh is basically a space age ceramic that only in recent history in the last 50 to 60 years are we as humans creating. And and that's where if you go to the geological record where with where we found if you believe that, when you see where we pulled that ceramic out in the ranges of that mesa, it should be millions of years old.

Tim Nealon 55:59

Yeah, I I read about that. I was just gonna say I read this just the other day when I was doing some research into Skinwalker Ranch and what you guys were doing. I actually thought that was very strange. Um not that I'm the ultimate judge of strange or not, but you know, the uh because I mean, if you're a skeptic, you could say, Oh, well, somebody at one point dug a deep hole there, right? Like, truly, like as a skeptic, you could say that and then and then put that there. But one, why? Um but the fact that you guys found that, because I don't remember the exact numbers, I mean maybe you do, but yeah, it was it was millions like that level, that layer of soil was millions of years old. And as far as I understood, based on the article, it was undisturbed. There was no sign of you know, people actually dug a hole and stuck it there. But some somehow this gets stuck in a layer that's millions of years old and it should not exist there.

Kaleb Bench 56:50

Yeah, I want to say it's the Uinta layer or the Uinta formation is what it's called, because there's the Duchesne and Uinta. Um, and there's a couple other formations because I I took some geology classes and then talking with Chris Roberts, our archaeologist, he's helped me to remember and taught me a little bit. Um, but that formation is like 50 million 50 million years old.

Tim Nealon 57:11

Yeah.

Kaleb Bench 57:12

It and so the depth at which we see it or are finding these ceramic pieces, it's millions of years old. And there was the whole reason why we're drilling where we're drilling is there's stories that there was a cave on the ranch. Okay, that people could walk into, and and one of the stories is you could walk in there for hours and not reach the end of it.

Tim Nealon 57:37

All right. You know, I mean, that doesn't sound unreasonable. That some caves you can do that, you know. Yeah, walk for a long time and never reach the end of it.

Kaleb Bench 57:45

Uh and so and I and for me, this is one of the things as a police officer, I go, when you look at the investigation too, there's a lot of individual cases, if you will, where in law enforcement we call it look at the totality of the circumstances and evidence, right? So you you take everything as a whole and go, what's it pointing to? What's it really telling us? And for instance, with the the the cave and why we're drilling where we're at, where we're getting this stuff, is we heard stories of these caves. We had people who 50, 40 years ago, when they were young kids or younger, reported to us saying, Yeah, I've been in caves out there, I don't know where I can't remember where they're at. And then we go to those locations and you can tell that things have fallen. So there very well could have been. Um, but then we had a security guard from the Bigelow era, Chris Bartell, tell us I found one where he there was a big bear trap in the cave that had been there since one of the older farmers. And then and looking around in the area, we've actually found possible remnants from maybe even the 1800s of potential mining equipment. And we're going, what? Right, you know, and that goes into the potential um Buffalo soldiers in the Irish infantry regiment that was out here when the army was tasked with keeping the youths on the reservation instead of letting them go back to Colorado.

Tim Nealon 59:19

Right.

Kaleb Bench 59:20

Um but Chris is telling us that he found this potential caved in location, and so we went out there and he pointed to us where it was at, and we found this location, and that was where we were like, okay, let's see if we can find any potential cave opening. Or so we put smoke bombs and all sorts of snake cams through this area looking for any kind of cave system. Uh, and then we had James Keenan come on, and he had found uh potential underwater tunnels or under you know tunnels filled with water coming from the high wintas, and it appeared as if some of them are cur converging where the ranch is. Okay, and he pointed to a location that we call the triangle, going, I believe it's coming through here. And we hadn't told anybody at the point at that point in time that was an area of of interest to us because of some of the things that we were finding, and then we do other scans and other um data finding experiments, and it points to strange information coming through that area, and so we start you know adding this all together, and then we start doing GPR, we start doing other these actual drilling exercises, and we're pulling out bags of this flat metal that, according to an expert at the University of Utah, it was fired, and one side has a different elemental makeup than the other side, and so that is extremely technological. Yeah, you know, when did humans start doing that? And it's very similar to the composition of metals found on space tiles and in space programs. So, you know, what's going on there? But then it's inside of a mesa that hundreds of feet deep that there's outside of you know, we had a drilling expert or blasting expert from the oil field come out and say, Yeah, I believe that this area was brought down. So was there a cave here? How deep did it go, and did something get placed there?

Tim Nealon 1:01:35

Well, it also, you know, you're talking about like these weird materials, and then earlier you mentioned the fact that there might have been an asteroid or meteor, whichever whichever one's the right word. Um, hit that area. I mean, is it possible that some of this weird material was actually on the meteor itself and it made a big hole and that's why it's buried so deep? Or but then again, you'd have to prove that an asteroid actually hit there. So once again, you're left with more questions than you actually are answers if you wanted to assume that that might be a possibility, you know.

Kaleb Bench 1:02:07

Yeah, and and that's what's been fun too is going, we are finding, we are getting answers, uh-huh. But I've been one that I believe if you get a good answer, that should raise more questions.

Tim Nealon 1:02:16

Yeah.

Kaleb Bench 1:02:16

You know, it's never and people I think this is kind of more of a society thing at this point, is everybody wants a one and done.

Tim Nealon 1:02:22

Yeah, of course. Why not?

Kaleb Bench 1:02:24

You want the instant gratification, right? And but that's not the scientific process. It is repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat.

Tim Nealon 1:02:29

Yeah. Well, what I what I think is interesting about what you guys are doing, and I and and once again, correct me if I'm wrong. You know, you guys are getting answers um to questions, but there is a part of me that it still feels like you guys don't even know what the ultimate question is yet. Like the Bigfoot thing, you know, not to go into that again, but like like there's an endpoint we could probably get to that, right? Like, right, is this a real animal or not? Maybe one day we can get to that point. But what everything you're describing, it's like we're trying to figure something out, but we we don't really know what we're trying to figure out at the same time. All we know is that there's weird shit that happens here. You know, we come up with this technology, these tasks, we run experiments, we bring in all these experts, and at the end of the day, some of those questions get answered, but there really is no like the question that's getting answered.

Direwolf Evidence And DNA Limits

Tim Nealon 1:03:20

Yeah. So how how difficult is it to work in an environment? Like one, I imagine it's fun as hell, but how difficult is it when at least from my perspective, it it seems like you guys don't even know the answer or you guys don't even know the question that you're really asking yet. And that's not an insult.

Kaleb Bench 1:03:37

Like it just feels like like that is a you know, we feel like we're narrowing in on something. Okay, but yeah, you know, we we go through and do experiments and we f and we feel like we get some answers and and we get maybe some kind of stable footing, but then something comes in or another experiment happens or and and some new information comes in and it just throws us for a loop.

Tim Nealon 1:04:04

Yeah.

Kaleb Bench 1:04:05

And and yeah, it's you know, there was one day where we all were just so done. Um that was yesterday. It was when we went out and and you know, answer me this. Have you you heard that we found a direwolf? What's can be identified structurally one one for one match from the jawbone as a dire wolf. Sure, yeah. They should be dead, you know, they're extinct.

Tim Nealon 1:04:38

Was it fossilized or was it like, you know, like it's still a marriage?

Kaleb Bench 1:04:41

Was when we found it in the river, it was rotten, nasty, disgusting. We we all thought it was just a dog or you know, big coyote or something. And we were like, well, the whole point of us coming down here was to take samples of whatever we find. So we cut the jawbone off, send it off to our biologist, and our biologist is freaking the fuck out for two weeks, going, Are you guys serious? And before and and that's what so there's a whole situation here because we always get asked why didn't you guys grab more of it? Because in the moment we were going, This is disgusting, this is just a dog, yeah. Yeah, why and then we find out two weeks later, even though they make it look like it was only a day, but it was two weeks later that the biologist goes, Let me walk you through why I believe this is what it is. He walks us through there's a structure in everybody's jawbone, especially canines, and crocodiles and are a great example of this. And that was the examples he showed us was crocodiles and alligators, and then showed us a coyote, a eastern gray wolf, which isn't in the US, and a and a fossilized direwolf jawbone. And what we found was a one for one match to the direwolf.

Tim Nealon 1:05:56

Right.

Kaleb Bench 1:05:57

And he's going, I put these things together. In one of my jobs. I if you gave this to me, cleaned up, because he's the one that had to clean it and get all the meat off of it. And he if and he said, if you had brought this to me and gave me no other information and said identify it, he'd have told you it was a direwolf, a juvenile direwolf.

Tim Nealon 1:06:18

Well, I mean, assuming that that, you know, he's correct, which I have no ability to say he is or not. Um, I mean, that just goes to show. Once again, there's a lot of shit out there that we don't know about. I mean, you know, the even just the idea of undiscovered animal species. I mean, we're discovering animal species all the time. Everybody thinks that yeah, we found everything. We have it's far from it.

Kaleb Bench 1:06:38

There's areas in the mountains in Idaho, in Canada, in in these very remote areas that I doubt people go walk through. Maybe one person will hike in there maybe every couple years. And you know, I here's a great example. People are driving on the road all day, every day, and they ignore shit all the time. Yeah. I will tell you this as a law enforcement officer. I don't care how many signs you put out there, there are people, there are people who do not see them.

Tim Nealon 1:07:08

I usually don't even see the road half the time. It's like that thing you do where you like you leave your house and you arrive, but you don't actually remember how you got there. You just know you did. Like right.

Kaleb Bench 1:07:19

Yeah. And and so I'm going, if there's a some crazy animal running around out there that's intelligent and smart and doesn't want you to see it, you're not gonna see it. Yeah.

Tim Nealon 1:07:31

Well, I mean, there's known species that do that. Like in your guys' neck of the woods, um, like I've noticed I've read uh some papers about jaguars actually, about how they're actually way more common in your area.

Kaleb Bench 1:07:43

I have a video on my phone from three years ago in Roosevelt, Utah, about a mile from my house. I can point, I'm pointing right out the direction, is a jaguar, a black jaguar. And I sent that to our biologist, and he's that's a jaguar. Yeah, they're not supposed to be up here. Yeah, he said the last time they're they were in this area in northern Utah was in the ice age.

Tim Nealon 1:08:08

Yeah, and but but they're there. I mean, we we we and then this happens all the time. So it's like, okay, if known animals can do that, how is it impossible that unknown animals aren't doing the same thing?

Kaleb Bench 1:08:19

Right, and and then this is again that situation with the direwolf, there's a whole series of events that happen before we even find that carcass. We have a cow that dies in October the previous year, and it's getting scavenged on, but even though its death was pretty weird, like cows when they die, they don't just drop. It was like something shot this animal and it just dropped.

Tim Nealon 1:08:46

Yeah.

Kaleb Bench 1:08:47

And its feet were up underneath it, they don't sit down like that. And we bring Ben out after it's been scavenged, and he takes a rib bone because it's a tooth mark, something bit through that rib bone. And he go and he takes it going, and people thought, oh, it could it be a bullet. No, it wasn't like we could you could tell if it was a bullet, yeah, because it would shatter the rib bone. This was a tooth, Ben can identify it as as a tooth that went through this rib bone. He takes it back to his area, his lab, and he takes bear skulls, wolf skulls, dog skulls, cat skulls, like mountain lions, and and even a lion from Africa, he's got a skull and tigers. Right. The only tooth that matched that ribbone was a dire wolf. And it was the only tooth when he put it in the press to go through and and testing this on another ribbone, the direwolf tooth was the only one that withstood going through the bone the way it and mimicked the way it happened in that other ribbone. Yeah. And then you go through, and a couple weeks after that, I got a message from my friend Don, who was out, he was a fire, he dealt with he was a fire chief for the BIA out here, and he recorded howling three miles south of the ranch. Yeah. And sends me that recording. I didn't really listen to it that night. He sent it to me. It was late. I was pretty much smoked from filming that day. And he I just remember seeing the text, and he said, if you're outside of your truck at night, don't get too far from it.

Tim Nealon 1:10:43

Guys, I think we found our new documentary subject, direwolves.

Kaleb Bench 1:10:48

Right? And I'm going, okay, Don, whatever. And a week later is when we find that direwolf in the river.

Tim Nealon 1:10:55

Yeah.

Kaleb Bench 1:10:56

That juvenile.

Tim Nealon 1:10:57

Yeah, and the state of decay that you talked about, I mean, that's entirely possible in a week's time in water. Like it sounds like, you know.

Kaleb Bench 1:11:05

And so I'm going, look at this line of evidence that we just picked up. It's not just we found this sitting in the river. There were other markers that looking back, I was like, holy shit.

Tim Nealon 1:11:17

By the way, I did not have direwolf on the bingo card for this episode. Like I had no idea.

Kaleb Bench 1:11:22

Yeah, no, no idea. Like and it and we were all kicking ourselves in the butt. You know, when Ben was like, You need to go out there and see if you can find the skull. Because if we had taken the full skull, that would have been the smoking gun of there's no questions or not, because of the sagittal crest, he'd have been able to go, this is the direwolf. We have a picture of it where you can see the canines when we pull that what the head up out of the water, these massive canines are at this crazy angle. And these I tried to catch them, they all fell out of the dang skull. Um, but Ben looking at that picture was like, That's a dire wolf. Yeah, that's like that's how their canines are, is they sit in this crossed section kind of thing. Because when they bite, think about what they're hunting. These giant 10,000 pound buffalo and these crazy ice age animals, their teeth and their head, they're it's they're just nuts.

Tim Nealon 1:12:17

Yeah. Well, I mean, if something like that does exist, I mean that they would have to, it would have to be a low population density because of what you just described. Like, you know, at some point they run out of things to eat, therefore the population of the predator would have to be minuscule to an extent, you know, enough to keep the genetic variation going in the population. But I mean, yeah, an animal like that, you know, I I don't know if direwolves exist or not. Um, but based on what what you found, I mean, that's pretty compelling. Now, most people are gonna say there's no way that animal could exist. You know, where is it? Where is it hiding? All this other stuff. But there, if there's not many of them, animals can hide unbelievably well. I I think I think as humans, we get really cocky about our abilities. Like, oh yeah, we should be able to find them. Like, no, not really.

Kaleb Bench 1:13:05

Well, that and that's the other parts of this too, is I am being law enforcement, I know DNR guys, we're the division of natural resources here in Utah. And I saw five massive wolves 10 years ago when I was in the oil field when I first moved down here. And I was like, What? Yeah, and because all official records say that there's no wolves in Utah. And in the last year or two, they finally go, Yeah, there's a pack up on this mountain over here.

Tim Nealon 1:13:33

Yeah.

Kaleb Bench 1:13:33

But for years, people in the state of Utah were reporting seeing wolves. And so I'm going, Well, is there a pack that has been running around in the UN in Utah and Montana or wherever? Because they run, they'll they range.

Tim Nealon 1:13:50

Oh, yeah, sure.

Kaleb Bench 1:13:51

Far away, you know, if especially depending on food.

Tim Nealon 1:13:54

Yeah.

Kaleb Bench 1:13:54

Um, and and so I went to my one DNR friend when the episode was gonna come out with the direwolf, was like, hey, dude, this is what we found last year.

Tim Nealon 1:14:03

Mm-hmm.

Kaleb Bench 1:14:04

And he was like, No, there's no, no, no, no, no, yeah.

Tim Nealon 1:14:07

And I'm okay. Well, you can't really trust those guys. And and I mean that in a nice way. Like, so I'm originally from Pennsylvania, and we have mountain lions in Pennsylvania. I don't care what anybody fucking says, they're there. Half the people I know have seen them. Um, they are absolutely breeding. But if you ask, you know, the the fish and game commission up there, they don't, they're not here. And you look at them and you're like, how can you say that to me with a straight face? Like, literally, half the people I know have seen one. And there's nothing there that we're it's not like we're seeing a deer and like confusing it with the mountain lion. It's a fucking mountain lion. Well, no, they're not here.

Kaleb Bench 1:14:45

What got me too was my friend, it was like six or eight months later. I happened to see him again at the gas station. He's like, Yeah, I have to tell you, like, I did get a call one day where someone said they shot a wolf. And I went up there, found the blood tracks where the blood trail followed it and everything, and looks up, and there's this big black wolf staring at him.

Tim Nealon 1:15:06

You know, now that I'm thinking about it, I actually have seen videos, and I want to say this was anything nowadays. I almost have to discount as AI, right? Like you almost have to. But this was long enough ago, I believe, that yeah, there were there's videos of these huge wolves. I want to say Montana, maybe, but but even I I did not grow up around wolves, I grew up in Pennsylvania. Um, I was lucky enough to see them once in the wild in Wisconsin. Um but other than that, so I don't have like a lot to gauge this off of, but this video, I mean, this wolf was a fucking monster. Like, like, well, abnormally large. Like, even for somebody who doesn't know wolves that well, you know, by by looking at them, you know.

Kaleb Bench 1:15:54

Well, so this is my knowledge and information of wolves is growing up in southeast Idaho, yellow Yellow National Yellowstone National Forest is literally an hour and a half, two hours away from where I grew up. My family has a cabin up in that area, has has had one up there since like 1983. When they introduced wolves in 1996 into Yellowstone, they were the big bastards from up north.

Tim Nealon 1:16:22

Right.

Kaleb Bench 1:16:23

Okay, these were not the little 150-pound wolves that were here that our ancestors killed when they came out in the 1800s, and were like, either you have wolves or you have people, you know. Um, and within a year or two, there were reports of those wolves in southeast Idaho. Yeah. But of course, the oh, the the government, no, the those wolves would never leave Yellowstone. We can confirm that. But we had people go missing in the mountains of Idaho. Um, and those wolves have ranged into Idaho, into Wyoming, into Utah. Yeah, and you were kind of hitting on the genetics thing of the dire wolf. We asked Ben if that could be a genetic variation, if that could be a mutation, if if that could be any of these potential explanations. And Ben was, no, you cannot get this one-for-one match. And then when we did the DNA test, my understanding was you test against known samples.

Tim Nealon 1:17:35

Sure. Yep.

Kaleb Bench 1:17:37

90% of that sample that we sent off from one of the teeth came back as unknown.

Tim Nealon 1:17:44

Yeah.

Kaleb Bench 1:17:45

So either the two options are is either it's corrupted or we don't have a match to what 90% of that DNA is. Yeah. Well then the other 10% was coming back as your the two closest relatives was the Eurasian gray wolf and uh some other red wolf or something from Europe. Right. Those aren't even in the US.

Tim Nealon 1:18:06

Yeah.

Kaleb Bench 1:18:06

Well and that was the largest DNA cluster that matched.

Tim Nealon 1:18:11

Well, what's frustrating about that is you know, people come back and say, well, well, you can't prove it's a direwolf then because the DNA did not come back as direwolf.

Kaleb Bench 1:18:18

And I hate

Cloaked Craft And Energy Injuries

Kaleb Bench 1:18:20

completely disregarding the fact that you then go back to the physical evidence that you have if the other testing is inconclusive and you have an expert in fossils who is identifying and can show you 300 different direwolf skulls and that and they all match one for one with that job one that we pulled out. And they're completely disregarding that.

Tim Nealon 1:18:45

And it's like well, the well, the well, they they they do that on, and I don't even realize that those people are doing this on purpose, but there is no dire wolf DNA. So, you know, as far as I know, like so it is impossible that that sample you turned in came back as dire wolf DNA, like not trying to purposely bring Bigfoot into this all the time, but we don't have Bigfoot DNA that we know of because there's no body like that, like a physical body that we've taken that from where we can say conclusively this is this is Bigfoot DNA. But what researchers sometimes do get is unknown primate DNA. But the skeptics will say, Well, well, that that's not Bigfoot DNA. I mean, maybe you're right, but then again, how do you know?

Kaleb Bench 1:19:27

Uh is again, you have to test against known DNA samples. Yeah, and so my under and that's my understanding is when you have 90% comeback and it's inconclusive, what are your two options? Right. It's either what you are thinking it is, or potentially it's corrupted and you can't test. Yeah. And it is unknown.

Tim Nealon 1:19:51

I feel like we need to go find direwolves now, guys. Like maybe we'll maybe we'll pause on Bigfoot for a moment and go to look for direwolves. I don't know. Like, I don't know. That sounds fun as shit. Um, by the way, the biggest thing I wanted to talk to you to you about was like the whole UFO stuff, UAPs and all that stuff. Shit, we haven't even got to that yet. We're already an hour and a half in. Uh, might have to come back for part two at a later date. But you know, not not trying to cut the direwolf conversation short, but I know a lot of people are gonna watch this episode specifically for UAPs and and all that kind of stuff that you have going on there. Um so so let's get into that just a little bit. Uh, because I don't want to keep I don't want to keep you too too much longer. Um, but when it comes to Skinwalker Ranch, you know, you described a little bit of it, you know, um unidentified lights in the sky, unidentified balls of lights, all that kind of stuff. Um me as somebody who really doesn't know a lot about UAPs or or UFOs or any of that kind of stuff, like are you guys actually getting like spacecraft there, or is it just like, or what you think of spacecraft, or is it just like there's weird shit in the sky that we can't explain? Like what what are you guys experiencing there?

Kaleb Bench 1:20:58

All of the above. Okay. So I believe it's season two. We I think we actually caught a very we catch a really amazing video of a UAP. I or maybe uh I'd even say UFO.

Tim Nealon 1:21:14

Okay.

Kaleb Bench 1:21:15

The way it flies, uh, the way we're able to analyze that video. Yeah, its capabilities are pretty amazing. Um and then yeah, so the again, this is kind of an anecdotal. My experience with what I saw above the ranch one day, it was a cloaked craft. Um, and one of the one of the crazy theories that Eric gave me is I I got an injury on the ranch very similar to this calf that in season five, you see this calf get microwaved and it goes blind. Broad daylight. Um it's probably one of the only experiences I've had that made me question my involvement on the ranch because what happened to that calf. And I'm in that instance, I'm going, you people just saw something happen to a calf real time.

Tim Nealon 1:22:06

Right.

Kaleb Bench 1:22:07

That we can't explain. There was nothing in the air, it was clear, broad freaking daylight. Something hit that calf with a direct energy weapon of some sort.

Tim Nealon 1:22:16

As in, like like the once again, I'm a dummy, I wasn't there.

Kaleb Bench 1:22:20

So you're you're observing a calf in a field, and all of a sudden it drops dead, and you guys go to investigate it, and you're like, you like so we were we were drilling, and this calf, we have video of it from 40 minutes before when it comes up to our science table and we shoe it away with the other calves, uh-huh, and it starts spinning in circles and it's freaking out. I've never seen a cow do this, and all the other cows are not coming near this thing. I go running down there because I'm intelligent, I guess, and I'm like 30 feet from this thing going, What is happening to this damn calf? Finally, it's able to get out of the area. We go track it down, and its eyes are pure white, it's blind.

Tim Nealon 1:23:01

Right.

Kaleb Bench 1:23:01

And the vet looks at it, pulls its eyes open, and you see blood behind the eyes, which is indicative of some kind of brain bleed, is what the vet said. They do the investigation and they come out and say it's some kind of electromagnetic energy. This ties to because, and then and again, I tie it back to the UAP thing because Eric and I've had another individual reach out to me who's in the Navy who had something happen to him, and he's told me that he was basically told by his command, hey, this is what happened to you. Um, and he told me that what happened to me, my injury, and I can send you that picture of my eye. Um, and Eric also gave me this theory of you got hit by something and then you were able to see stuff. As crazy as that sounds, and as comfortable and heartwarming that is to think about, you know, I I I can't say that's true, I can you know, or you know, that's actually what it was, but it is interesting to think about. Um, but this other individual telling me that also years apart, just makes me think. Um, so I see that, and then it was six months later that I see the craft above the ranch. Um, how it caught my attention was I was watching these birds fly around. We were filming, and essentially think like this object sitting in the sky, and these birds fly behind it, and it does that weird, funny mirror. Oh, yeah, okay, elongating kind of thing, and the birds do that weird thing behind it, and I go, What the fuck did I just see?

Tim Nealon 1:24:41

Uh-huh.

Kaleb Bench 1:24:42

And I sit and study the area, and I finally make out the outline of whatever this object is. Um, and this is where I go, it was stationary for a couple minutes, and I think when it realized I could see it is when it started moving towards the triangle area.

Tim Nealon 1:25:00

Right. Well, I I think this idea of cloaked objects. I I mean, once again, I'm not an expert, so who the fuck am I really to have an opinion on any of this stuff? But you know, it it seems like that's entirely plausible, you know, this idea that that vehicles or objects in the sky can do that. Because I I think people, and correct me if I'm wrong if you know, but I think people are to the point where we're at least creating like uh not shields, but like, you know, like a shield you would hold that kind of makes you invisible. Not you literally, but like you you're hiding behind this shield, and somehow this works and it and it literally makes you invisible in the environment.

Kaleb Bench 1:25:36

Yeah, there's there's a bunch of different systems that have been shown different kinds of cloaks, if you will. I know what you're I know the shield uh concept you're talking about. Um and that's where I I go, okay, was this some kind of technology again from government sources monitoring the ranch? Or is this it's always the government's a near peer? Why would you have the asset here?

Tim Nealon 1:26:01

Yeah.

Kaleb Bench 1:26:02

And why would you reveal it here of all places in the middle of freaking nowhere? Um, or is this NHI? And then and that was the thing is in year two, we catch that this video of the southern UAP and it's produ and it's performing these maneuvers that we bring in uh Cameron, Brandon's brother, who's a pilot, and he goes, I can't do that.

Tim Nealon 1:26:26

Yeah, well, well, they've shown they've shown some of these videos where they're like, I mean, they're moving at incredible speeds, just doing 90 degree turns, and it's not even just the technology that people can't explain it. The the one guy, you know, I I forget his credentials or whatever, but essentially what he was saying is that if there was a life form in that craft, like a human being, like they would instantly die. Like because it was going at such high speeds, and to to move to change direction that quick, the human body is not made for that.

Kaleb Bench 1:26:54

And yeah, you have to have. Um, I'm trying to think what the what it's called. There's a special it's essentially a the theoretical technology to my understanding, that you have to have that level of technology to be able to do that kind of maneuver.

Tim Nealon 1:27:06

Yeah.

Kaleb Bench 1:27:07

Because it's like you're existing outside of the known physics that we up that we're operating by.

Tim Nealon 1:27:16

Yeah.

Kaleb Bench 1:27:16

Um, and then that's where we've seen, yeah, orbs, we've got tons of videos of that. Um I uh one of the things that happened to me off the ranch was uh I was on patrol one night, and my friend who worked at with the Utah Highway Patrol at that time calls me up and goes, dude, you'll never guess what just happened. And it's still happening. I was like, Well, what what what's going on? He's like, I am picking up something with my radar. I'm parked down here at this location, and

Radar Hits, Helicopter Tracking, Reactions

Kaleb Bench 1:27:50

this thing is buzzing me like top gun.

Tim Nealon 1:27:53

Okay.

Kaleb Bench 1:27:53

You know, it's it's like it's buzzing the tower, it's just going back and forth. And he's like, I am catching this. It's on my front radar, then going behind my vehicle. I catch it with my back radar. When a car drives by, it stops, and I pick up the car. I've, you know, this he knew his radar system.

Tim Nealon 1:28:13

Right.

Kaleb Bench 1:28:14

And then on top of that, a second highway patrolman pulls up to talk to him. He only has a forward-facing radar. Both catch the same object.

Tim Nealon 1:28:24

Right.

Kaleb Bench 1:28:25

Going the same direction, the same speed, confirming it.

Tim Nealon 1:28:28

So it wasn't.

Kaleb Bench 1:28:29

And that trooper was like, I'm out of here.

Tim Nealon 1:28:31

Yeah. So it wasn't just his equipment malfunctioning. It it was verified by a second piece of equipment.

Kaleb Bench 1:28:36

Yes. And that was in a very near location when you look at where the ranch is, and we've heard some other information regarding some families that had some crazy stuff happening on their property, and it all lines up in this corridor, if you will. Um and so that was another crazy experience. Um where I'm very near to it. And we had some similar things happen with Cameron's helicopter where it's radar that is basically telling you how close you are to the ground, saying that there's something following him underneath the helicopter at four to five thousand feet above the ranch.

Tim Nealon 1:29:23

Right.

Kaleb Bench 1:29:24

And he would move and do a maneuver, it would go away, but then he's going on this other area and it comes back within a couple seconds. So it was like he would do a maneuver, whatever was there would then react and get back underneath him.

Tim Nealon 1:29:38

You know, do you do you think that the fact you guys are doing all these experiments is kind of making these things happen more?

Kaleb Bench 1:29:44

Well, and that so one of the theories uh that and uh this is where I've said this for years is what if it is some kind of defense mechanism based on what we're doing, you're gonna it's just like any country or whatever, you know. If you send something up into the air in an area that is of interest or extremely close to an asset or you know, perceived line of you know property or whatever, you're gonna send up a reaction to it.

Tim Nealon 1:30:16

Right.

Kaleb Bench 1:30:16

So, yeah, are we and that's kind of things with the rockets with these other experiments, we're doing you know, we're we're putting thermal energy up with flamethrowers and stuff. Um, we've used Tesla coils in the past, uh, the one year by the way. This place just keeps sounding more and more fun, by the way. It's it's been a good time. Um we're using all these different kinds of energy to be like, okay, what is will this get us a reaction? And a lot of times it does. And and that's where we're why again we shoot so many rockets is we have beyond probably a thousand rocket launches at this point showing that 60 to probably 70 percent of them are interacting with something or something is responding to them.

Tim Nealon 1:31:07

Right.

Kaleb Bench 1:31:07

And that you can go anywhere else and shoot rockets, and they will not do what they're doing here.

Tim Nealon 1:31:12

Yeah, I've I've never had in when I was in high school, I was on rocket club. I never had anything cool like that happen.

Kaleb Bench 1:31:17

Um so we I and and it's one of those um circumstances and pieces of evidence that I would point to going, we are trying these different types of technology, these different types of energy sources, and we're getting readings, we're trying to track this down, and and kind of to our conversation earlier is you what kind of equipment do we need? Yeah, like our and that's again, I point back to Eric's uh uh metaframe that he's created because we're trying to track things that we can't get in some of these other pieces of uh information collecting systems, yeah. And so he had to go through and build a very unique system to help catch some of this stuff, and it and he's caught stuff. If you watch season seven, you're seeing us catch stuff real time with this.

Tim Nealon 1:32:14

Yeah. Well, you know, I don't know what the hell's going on out there, but it seems like there's a lot. Um to the point where it's almost like like what do you do next? Like how you know, we you you know, we didn't even get into half of what you talked about in the beginning, you know, cryptids and all this other stuff, you know. Hell, I don't even think we talked about fucking skinwalkers on Skinwalker Ranch episode. Um, you know, like like how do you guys decide what to investigate next? Or is it just the matter of this is what's happening right now, this is where our attention goes? Like, how do you choose?

Kaleb Bench 1:32:45

We follow the data. We Eric has said we just will go out, do the experiment, and whatever the whatever the data shows us, that's where we go.

Tim Nealon 1:32:53

Right.

Kaleb Bench 1:32:54

Um, and so that's where it can kind of feel like we're all over the place. And at times people want us to go back and investigate uh more into a certain topic, but this is one of the crazy um happenstances or circ I hate using the same word circumstances, but we have tons of examples when we go out with an aimed goal for an experiment, and it is completely derailed by a different finding that we weren't even looking for, and we're going what? And we go investigate that next.

Tim Nealon 1:33:31

Yeah.

Kaleb Bench 1:33:32

And and that's where it kind of some and that's where it feels at times that something is messing with us, redirecting us in different ways by giving us more information that's just nuts.

Tim Nealon 1:33:42

Right.

Kaleb Bench 1:33:42

Um, a prime example of this is we bring out these um telescopes, uh, big astrologists and astronomers coming out with these massive telescopes, and they have like 60, 80 years of experience between them, and they have and the whole point was okay, we're looking at the air above the triangle, and the idea is when these stars go through, we're gonna lock onto the stars and follow them with the telescopes um and see if something visual happens. Right. Like there's an anomaly that there might be something there above the triangle. Well, as that experiment gets set up, they have these closed systems with thousands of stars in them, right? And you go to that telescope, put in whatever star you want to go to, and it zips over and looks at it.

Tim Nealon 1:34:40

Right.

Kaleb Bench 1:34:42

Well, when we start doing this, every star that we were looking at, they'd be like, okay, we're gonna follow this one as it's gonna come through the area next. He'd go to it and it was missing from the system. Something removed it from the database.

Tim Nealon 1:34:59

Oh, I thought you meant like something in the sky was actually like inhibiting your ability to view that star as it's moving through the sky.

Kaleb Bench 1:35:06

Um something went into this close, it's

Lasers Over The Triangle Bend Light

Kaleb Bench 1:35:10

it's a system, basically a data system, uh database of all the stars and all these celestial objects. And every time we chose one, it would be taken from the database. Yeah. And the crazy part is when they got back out to Salt Lake, it was back in the system.

Tim Nealon 1:35:28

Yeah, I don't I don't even know what to do with that.

Kaleb Bench 1:35:31

Like, you know, um and and and so that was going on, and so we're sitting here going, well, what the heck are we gonna do? This is this whole experiment's kind of a bust now because of this crazy stuff that's going on. And I've and since the one year I always wanted to take a laser pointer, go stand in the triangle and shoot it uh just straight up. And so we go out there to shoot a rocket, and I take out this laser pointer and I shoot it straight up, and that beam goes up, looks like it hit something, and then there's a section of that laser missing, and then it keeps going. And I'm like, that's not normal.

Tim Nealon 1:36:08

Right.

Kaleb Bench 1:36:09

Yeah, and I I I can just see my the look on my face as I'm doing this for a couple minutes, and I'm like, hey Travis, come check this out. And I do it again, and I hit whatever I'm the I'm I'm gonna say object. I I don't know if it's an object or not, but I shoot the laser when he comes over and it something split the beam.

Tim Nealon 1:36:32

So that if anything, that's not normal, you know.

Kaleb Bench 1:36:35

Like there's something like 30, 40, maybe more feet in the air. Uh-huh. Oh, it's that close. What the hell?

Tim Nealon 1:36:45

I didn't realize it was that close. I thought you were talking maybe like a couple hundred yards up in the air or something.

Kaleb Bench 1:36:49

It might it might have been it. That's where it's hard to kind of judge when you're looking straight up like that. True. Um, and then I'm I'm going, what the hell? And I do it again. And you and we actually have a steal from one of our cameras that we were using where you'll see that beam and it's bending. Something is bending the laser light up above the sky. Yeah, that's not supposed to be and we're and we're sitting here going, what the hell? And that kind of helped us go later going, hey, you know, let's bring bigger lasers out. And we catch some very similar um data where we're seeing this happen with massive lasers, right? Where sections of the lasers missing, um things aren't interrupting the beam, all sorts of craziness.

Tim Nealon 1:37:40

Yeah, I don't I mean, I go back to what I keep saying. I mean, you know, I I get it, you know, Skimwalker Ranch, but at the same time, like I don't get it at all. Like you guys have just so much weird shit. I I I literally wouldn't even know where to start. Um you know, even even the laser thing. I'm like, okay, that's cool. Like, what do you do with that? Like, well, okay, like like what's the next step? Like what you know, and by the way, it goes back to what I said before. It's like, you know, I understand that like that's just something you did and and you saw the results of it, but like okay, what does that even suggest? Like, what's the next question that needs to be answered? Like, you know, like where do you even go with that? You know, right?

Kaleb Bench 1:38:17

And so that that kind of let us go, hey, let's bring out some of these other scans, say the lidar scans, because instead of using like these laser cannons, let's get a system that paints the area with uh an infrared beam and see what happens and see if we can get more data that can point us down another track of investigation. Right. Um, and then yeah, it's why is this happening? Yeah, is this a who's doing this? Yeah, is this a what that's doing this? And and then and that's trust me, I I I can see why people are going, Well, what's the end game?

Tim Nealon 1:38:52

I don't know.

Kaleb Bench 1:38:53

We think we get an end game in mind, but then something completely freaking nuts happens and throws us all for a loop, and we're like, I don't know.

Tim Nealon 1:39:02

Well, semi semi-well, actually, it's a serious question, but even though it sounds kind of silly, yes. Talk about rockets shooting rockets into the sky, all these objects. Have you ever tried to shoot one of these things with one of your rockets?

Kaleb Bench 1:39:12

Do what now?

Tim Nealon 1:39:13

Like, have you ever tried to shoot like where one of these things are that you think? Have you ever tried to like shoot it with one of your rockets? Oh, yeah. Like, has it what has that yielded any uh data or results?

Kaleb Bench 1:39:25

Or well, that's where we're going again. When I'll I point to when we shoot these rockets off this year, and you see the rockets the the parachute cord being cut. We're there's an area above the what we call the triangle where we continue to get information. And again, in tonight's episode, um you're gonna get information that according to science, this is an impossibility, right? But we are getting multiple drone flights of different drones pre-cro pre-programmed into this certain flight. All those flights gave us the same information, showing us that data. And I think they'll only they'll probably only show that it was one flight, but it was multiple flights, all giving us the same information going and the sky elements guys, their their engineers and their scientists, Eric and Travis with their information and knowledge, and sharing that information, to my understanding, with a few other individuals that understand this, they're all going, This, how did this happen?

Tim Nealon 1:40:36

Right. Makes no sense, but it's happening.

Where To Watch And Insider Recaps

Kaleb Bench 1:40:40

And people are probably are just I'm already seeing comments, oh, more drones, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, then you don't understand what we're finding and fail to understand the significance of what will be shown. Yeah, and that's why we keep doing these things over and over again because those systems, again, this is a scientific method. We're gonna go out there with drones every year and do these experiments with them because of the data that we're getting from it. Yeah.

Tim Nealon 1:41:06

Well, if somebody wanted to watch tonight's episode, where could they find it?

Kaleb Bench 1:41:10

Uh uh History Channel. Uh-huh. I I know they're being they're available on Amazon. Um, I think the first four seasons are free on Amazon if you're Prime member, and then you have to buy the the next couple seasons. Right. Um, I know Netflix, there was a couple seasons there. They're they're kind of scattered all over the place. Um, that's that's where it's outside of my control, yeah, you know, and the team's control on that.

Tim Nealon 1:41:37

Well, uh we're getting to the point where like I'm gonna start f feeling bad keeping you too much longer. We've almost been here two hours at this point. So like and I've and I feel like I'm like, shit, like I said, we didn't even talk about skinwalkers or anything, but maybe maybe another time. Um, but you know, if uh people wanted to, you know, that's where they could watch you, but like do you guys have a website where you keep things you know up to date, or do you guys talk about what you're doing on social media outside of the show? Like, where where can people keep up with what's going on at Skin Rancher? Skin Skin Rancher, Jesus, Skinwalker Ranch.

Kaleb Bench 1:42:11

Uh we do uh episode recaps on uh skinwalker ranch.com. It's our insider page. Uh that's where we we as a group try to get on there every Thursday night and give people a day or two to watch the episode that comes out on Tuesday night, and we try to walk through and answer those questions that people have in the moment. And obviously we never get to them all. Um and that's why we we try to do podcasts like this and give people more information and walk through, give them more of that information, you know, of the context that might be missing from the episodes. Because again, like we did the math and you literally see less than one percent.

Tim Nealon 1:42:52

Oh, I believe it. Yeah.

Kaleb Bench 1:42:54

You know, we have 80 cameras all told between ranch assets, the production assets, and they're running 12 hours a day, yeah, minimum. The ranch assets are running all the time. We literally have terabytes of video data, and just from a couple months of the investigation, and you're seeing 45 minutes of it.

Tim Nealon 1:43:21

Yeah, that's nothing. Yeah, I I know what that's like. I didn't go like does somebody manually review all that, or is it just you know, when we think something happens, somebody goes back and looks at it?

Kaleb Bench 1:43:34

We we do try to review in those, especially around the experiments and try to review with we timestamp, we go to when someone notices something, and you know, that's a question that we have uh during filming is are we just catching more phenomena when we're out there because we have 50 people and all these cameras and and we and is that why we're catching in um these different um episodes when they occur? Or is it and are they always happening right? But we just don't have the assets to catch them the rest of the year, or the eyeballs, you know. So that's one of the questions. Or is it because we're coming out exciting the ranch with the presence of so many people, all the different experiments, the energy, and you know, we're energizing that space. And is that why we're catching so much stuff during that short period of time? Yeah, we've we don't know. It would take probably a really focused study over 20 years to really answer that question.

Tim Nealon 1:44:38

Yeah, yay, 20 years to get an answer. Can't wait.

Kaleb Bench 1:44:42

And you know, and that's that's another point that I like to bring up is when you look at a bunch of these studies that come out, they had 10 years to get the information, go through it, retest, retest, really refine the the experiment and get that information all organized and all that. We're doing these experiments, and eight months later the first episode comes out. So are we really given a lot of time to go through and do retests and really hammer into what we just found?

Tim Nealon 1:45:17

No, yeah.

Kaleb Bench 1:45:18

Well, and that's the science and the production do this.

Tim Nealon 1:45:22

Yeah, I was gonna say there's no production company in the world that'll be like, Yeah, get it, get it to us in 10 years. Um it's not happening. All right, well, let's let's go ahead and start wrapping this up because like I said, I I feel bad keeping it this long, but anyways. Um no, you're fine. But uh, so you know, over the next uh, you know, I don't know, 12 months, it just sounds like more experiments, more data collection, more just trying to figure out what's going on. That's that's kind of what you guys are focusing on at Skinwalker range.

Kaleb Bench 1:45:46

Yeah, we're obviously gonna be focusing on the Mesa with what we're finding inside there. We want to get in there just as bad, probably more than anybody else, but when you go through and understand the data that we're collecting during that process, is it's a gold mine of data.

Tim Nealon 1:46:04

Oh, I bet. Yeah.

Kaleb Bench 1:46:05

Um, and then obviously with the the circle and the bubble and all this other craziness that we're you know recording and and getting more data on, it's just painting it is painting a bigger picture, and we are getting new information every year to help us understand what's going on. And so I don't know, you know, if we'll ever get to the smoking gun.

Tim Nealon 1:46:31

My guess is probably not, and not for lack of trying or knowledge, it's just like you said, one you uncover one thing, you know, that it leads you to another thing. You get one piece of data, it leads you to 10 more questions. Um, yeah, that process is probably gonna be going on for quite some time.

Kaleb Bench 1:46:46

Um it's as frustrating as that is at times, it's also again, it's been fun. It's I'm I wouldn't trade it, you know. It's definitely been a very unique experience, and I'm glad I'm a part of it, and I'm grateful that I'm a part of it. And yeah, uh that's where I'm I try to come on to shows like this and and share what I can to

What Comes Next And Final Thoughts

Kaleb Bench 1:47:10

maybe give people more of that complete picture, yeah. Um, and and that's kind of where I go. Be careful I do say be careful about where you're getting some information because I see stuff all the time and it just pisses me off because I'm like, these people are just spreading bullshit, and it drives me bonkers because people are believing it, and I'm going, no, you know, especially when it comes to the ranch, and um, you know, and kind of to the point of I don't know if we'll ever get the smoking gun. It's again, we don't know, maybe we just don't have the technology capable of really answering some of these questions yet. And you know, because we've we've pointed this out with the Big Low team, is they they had the equipment they had 20 years ago. Think about the cameras that they had 20 years ago. Um you have a better camera on your phone than they were able to go get and put up as security cameras on the ranch, right? But now we have phones that can zoom in on the northern lights, you know.

Tim Nealon 1:48:11

Right.

Kaleb Bench 1:48:12

Well, and so well when you talk to the big low guys, I don't think it was for a lack of trying. They were trying, they were just they just were limited in their capabilities on the technology side.

Tim Nealon 1:48:22

Yeah.

Kaleb Bench 1:48:22

And so what's gonna come out in the next 50 years that can help us understand what we're seeing.

Tim Nealon 1:48:28

Yeah. I think there's gonna be a lot. You know, I definitely, you know, if I had to guess, you know, you guys are gonna make a lot of progress, and that progress is just gonna lead to more questions, which is gonna lead to more progress and uh rinse and repeat, you know.

Kaleb Bench 1:48:40

And we know that a lot of um eyes are on the ranch uh in the government and in the private sector. We have a lot of people in very unique positions that are paying attention to what we're doing and and finding it fascinating. And that's what's fun is knowing that we are driving a lot of the conversation that's been happening the last five, six years. Um, like Steven Spielberg in that movie he just came out with, um Disclosure Day. He he said he binge watched Skinwalker Ranch and got inspiration to do it.

Tim Nealon 1:49:17

Right.

Kaleb Bench 1:49:18

I whether it was good or bad, I don't know. Um, but we and then there's other shows that I started watching. I was like, oh, I feel like I'm just reliving what I've experienced on the ranch. Right. You know. Um so I know we're we're making inroads and we're inspiring a lot of people, and it's and that's really cool. That's been really neat.

Tim Nealon 1:49:39

Well, like I said, you know, all these type of shows, you know, whether I'm talking to you know, somebody from Ghost Adventures or uh Finding Bigfoot or or Skinwalker Ranch, I I think that the biggest service that you guys do to the world is it's like you said, inspire people to get off their fucking couch, put the computer away, seriously, and like understand there's way more to this world than we'll ever understand. Like go out and discover some of it, you know. Whether it's a hike in the woods or staring at the skies, you know, just something like find that curious nature again, you know, that that that side of humanity that once inspired us to travel the globe to find new lands. Like get off the fucking couch.

Kaleb Bench 1:50:18

Well, like yeah, and it's and on honestly, some of the coolest takeaways is for me personally, the the good that I try to focus on is when you're at these phenomicons or these conferences and share people come up and tell you stuff. We've had the numberless people come up. Thank you. Like, we watch your show because it's the first thing I've been able to connect with my kid in the last 10 years.

Tim Nealon 1:50:45

Right. Yeah.

Kaleb Bench 1:50:46

You know, I don't care about a bunch of the other stuff people want to say. That right there makes it worth it. Is is amazing. Um when you have teachers come up to you going, I share, I I put on certain experiments from your show because it's easy to understand, they explain it well, and the kids love it. Yeah, and they actually learn something.

Tim Nealon 1:51:09

Yeah, that's cool. That's cool.

Kaleb Bench 1:51:10

Yeah, you know, so I'm like, if anything, that's what we're trying to do. You know, we're trying to get people to question, we're trying to get inspire people, and it's a part of it, and that's really fun.

Tim Nealon 1:51:25

Yeah. All right. Well, I'm gonna let you go, Caleb. I'm glad that we ended up on ended up on such a positive note there. Um, but no, I I really appreciate you you joining us. And uh, you know, anything you want to send over and we'll include in the show notes, you know, social media, website, you know, get that all over to us. We'll we'll share it with the world as well. Um, but no, it's been great talking to you. I feel like we could, if it wasn't so fucking hot up here. By the way, what's going on with the HVAC? I thought this shit was supposed to be fixed. We're sitting in like an 83 degree room right now, like this whole time.

Kaleb Bench 1:51:54

Me too. I'm sitting on the west side of this house and I'm yeah, it's fucking bullshit.

Tim Nealon 1:51:59

So um, but yeah, I would love to have you back on the future, you know, maybe you know, a couple months from now, or you know, maybe you know, at the end of the year, let's see what you guys are coming up with and you know, give you another chance to to share what's going on at Skinwalker Ranch that a lot of people aren't privy to. Uh correct some of that misinformation out there.

Kaleb Bench 1:52:15

So yeah, excited too. I'd be happy to come back on and and share some more experiences and and really do some deep dives into some other topics if you want. Um be thank you again for having me on. Uh enjoyed the conversation.

Tim Nealon 1:52:26

Yeah, no problem, Callum. I really appreciate it. And until next time.

Producer 1:52:31

This episode was brought to you by Ghost City Tours, your guide to the haunted side of history in over 30 cities nationwide. From restless spirits to unsolved mysteries, more tours bring the dead back to life. Book now for a haunted city near you at ghostcitytours.com. Be sure to subscribe to the Ghost City Podcast on YouTube, but pop, and whatever you get your podcast. And remember, you can see the video.