Mysterious low-flying spacecraft, doorways that appear in midair, disembodied voices, crop circles, mutilated cattle…the stuff of science fiction? Or just another day at Skinwalker Ranch? Though thousands of people have reported seeing UFOs over the decades, this particular 512 acres of property in the Uintah Basin region of northeastern Utah seems to be a hotbed for extraterrestrial activity.
Terry and Gwen Sherman bought the now-infamous ranch back in 1994, presumably unaware of what they were getting themselves into, and Skinwalker Ranch has since become one of the most heavily researched, and controversial, paranormal spots in the world.
The First Sightings
“For a long time we wondered what we were seeing, if it was something to do with a top-secret project. I don’t know really what to think about it.”
Terry Sherman
The family’s initial reports of bizarre and unexplained phenomena came from their first two years living there, where they and their two children witnessed a variety of unnerving events. Between 1994-1996 they saw three different types of UFOs, discovered eight foot by three foot rings of flattened crops, and lost seven cows (four disappeared, one apparently lifted straight from the snow in which it stood, and three were mutilated). The mutilations are particularly strange as the wounds were surgically precise and bloodless. The Shermans also report having seen strange animals, including a wolf three times larger than it should have been and impervious to bullets.
Real Estate Agents Love UFOs
The Shermans shared their paranormal findings with the Deseret News in June of 1996, and three months later Las Vegas real estate magnate and UFO enthusiast Robert Bigelow bought the property. Bigelow, also the founder of an organization known as National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDSci), set up 24/7 surveillance of the ranch with his team of scientists, researchers, and guards. Over the decades he reported having numerous experiences and sightings, but according to skeptics he was never able to provide hard proof. At one point the United States Defense Department even became involved, conducting a secret investigation under the name Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP).
Bigelow eventually sold the property in 2016 to Adamantium Holdings, which was later revealed to be a shell company of real estate tycoon Brandon Frugal, who wanted his identity to remain anonymous. Frugal is the one who acquired the trademark “Skinwalker Ranch”. The name Skinwalker refers to a malevolent being in Native American folklore. Many indigenous tribes believe these “skinwalkers” are witches who can transform themselves into various animals. Indeed there is a large population of Ute living in and around the Uintah Basin and they believe the ranch has been a haunt for skinwalkers for at least fifteen generations.
Final Thoughts
So have all the reports over the decades at Skinwalker Ranch been hoaxes? Are they less extraordinary phenomena with perfectly reasonable explanations? Or, as many claim, is there something otherworldly going on? It’s no surprise that in an area known to the extraterrestrial research community as “UFO Alley”, the Uintah Basin would draw worldwide attention. But there is a particular allure to Skinwalker Ranch, the crowned king of alien activity. It was even Google’s most searched cultural landmark in the U.S. in 2022. Thanks to media attention, billionaires, skeptics, and numerous books and shows, such as the History Channel’s currently running The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, it’s clear that there is something about the ranch worth exploring.
Ben’s love for horror began at a young age when he devoured books like the Goosebumps series and the various scary stories of Alvin Schwartz. Growing up he spent an unholy amount of time binge watching horror films and staying up till the early hours of the morning playing games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Since then his love for the genre has only increased, expanding to include all manner of subgenres and mediums. He firmly believes in the power of horror to create an imaginative space for exploring our connection to each other and the universe, but he also appreciates the pure entertainment of B movies and splatterpunk fiction.
Nowadays you can find Ben hustling his skills as a freelance writer and editor. When he’s not building his portfolio or spending time with his wife and two kids, he’s immersing himself in his reading and writing. Though he loves horror in all forms, he has a particular penchant for indie authors and publishers. He is a proud supporter of the horror community and spends much of his free time reviewing and promoting the books/comics you need to be reading right now!
Vanishing hitchhikers are one of the most widespread and commonly reported urban legends in the US, a phenomenon which gained notoriety as the title-story in Jan Brunvand’s The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and their Meanings (1981). Puzzle Box Horror’s Scariest Urban Legends series continue with The Phantom Hitchhiker of Black Horse Lake.
The Vanishing Hitchhiker Legends
There are two primary manifestations of the vanishing hitchhiker legend, the first being particularly famous around Britain and the US. So it goes; Someone is driving home at night when they spot a young girl hitching from the roadside. She sits in the back and, at some point in the journey, mysteriously disappears. Having been given her address, the driver goes there anyway, where he learns that the girl died in a car crash years before. In some renditions of the story the driver then visits the graveyard where she is buried, only to find a jacket hung over her gravestone. In the story’s other depiction, one rarely heard around the UK, the hitchhiker is a male, supernatural being. He tells of some great misfortune or disaster that will befall the earth before disappearing into the night. So the legend says, all of the entity’s predictions come true, leading drivers to believe they witnessed an angel or even Jesus Christ himself.
Hitchhiking at its core is inherently scary for both parties involved; both hitchhiker and driver are at equal risk during the age-old favour and neither usually knows quite who they’re sitting next to, at least at first. This fear has been milked throughout the ages in horror cinema and literature, most notably in the Rutger Hauer road-horror classic, The Hitcher (1986).
Black Horse Lake
Great Falls in Cascade County, a county named for the falls on the Missouri River, is the third-largest city in Montana. Just outside Great Falls sits the seasonal Black Horse Lake, which only sees water during the spring and early summer. If you’re driving down a stretch of road adjacent to the lake, just off highway 87, toward Fort Benton, you might be unlucky enough to encounter a very different kind of phantom hitchhiker.
Phantom Hitchhiker of Black Horse Lake
Reports tell of a tall Native American man with long black hair, inconspicuously hitching a ride. Some claim to spot him in bib overalls, others say he dons a denim jacket and jeans. However, when drivers get close enough to the figure he suddenly appears in front of the car, rolling onto the windscreen with a deathly thud. Many people react in the obvious manner, screeching to a halt and getting out to check the poor fellow is okay. Of course, in true spectral fashion, the man is nowhere to be seen, and the car is always without a scratch. This is both a positive and a negative, as though no physical damage has been dealt, the driver must now continue their lives with no proof to themselves or others that they really witnessed what they think they did. With no proof, the whole ordeal can easily be passed off as a trick of the overactive imagination, though this particular phenomenon has occurred so frequently and with such similarity that it has cemented itself in the annals of international urban legends forever.
Many believe that this is the ghost of a transient Native American who’s nomadic lifestyle was violently interrupted one night by a passing car that struck him. Many renditions of the tale say that the man is forced to relive his last brutal moments on earth in a Palm Springs-esque infinite loop, conjuring an even greater horror to the nightmare.
Joe first knew he wanted to write in year six after plaguing his teacher’s dreams with a harrowing story of World War prisoners and an insidious ‘book of the dead’. Clearly infatuated with horror, and wearing his influences on his sleeve, he dabbled in some smaller pieces before starting work on his condensed sci-fi epic, System Reset in 2013.Once this was published he began work on many smaller horror stories and poems in bid to harness and connect with his own fears and passions and build on his craft. Joe is obsessed with atmosphere and aesthetic, big concepts and even bigger senses of scale, feeding on cosmic horror of the deep sea and vastness of space and the emotions these can invoke. His main fixes within the dark arts include horror films, extreme metal music and the bleakest of poetry and science fiction literature. He holds a deep respect for plot, creative flow and the context of art, and hopes to forge deeper connections between them around filmmakers dabbling in the dark and macabre.
The Death Ship of the Platte River, Wyoming is the legend of a ghost ship that sails the river. It can be spotted between Torrington and Alcova, Wyoming. Legend says the mysterious boat is a “Ship of Death” and is cursed to sail upon the treacherous river forever. Witnesses say this phantom ship shows itself on the edge of a strange and small mist that turns miraculously into a massive rolling fog bank in seconds. As the ship gets closer, witnesses report the ship’s sails, masts, and crew are covered with frost.
It’s said that if you see the “Ship of Death”, the ghost crew will be standing on the deck circled around a dead corpse. The ship foreshadows the death of someone on the day the death ship is seen. When the crew steps back, the identity of the corpse will be revealed as someone you know and love, or it may be you that will ultimately meet your fate that day.
The death ship was first sighted in 1862. A trapper, Leon Webber, reported his encounter with the ship. Webber saw a crew of frost-covered sailors crowded around something lying on the ship’s deck. When the crew stepped away Webber saw the corpse of his fiancée. It is said that a month later when he returned home he learned that his beloved fiancée had passed away the day he reportedly saw the death ship.
Should you decide to search for the death ship keep an eye out for the spectral vessel during autumn, a time when it is said to make its appearance. Though there haven’t been officially reported sightings, The Cheyenne Bureau of Psychological Research keeps track of the reported sightings of the death ship. The death ship has been seen on the Platte River only a handful of times every 25 years. You may be the next to witness it, but beware the outcome.
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So you don’t want to stay inside? Neither did the residents of the village of Kepuh on Java Island.
Horror culture in Indonesia seems to be sparking interest around the world these days–with nothing but news about the global pandemic, they gave us an interesting view into a culturally relevant practice that they’ve started. The village of Kepuh on Java Island in Indonesia has been using a figure in their horror culture to scare people into adhering to social distancing guidelines. The pocong have been appearing randomly, as volunteers have been taking to the streets dressed in a burial shroud in an effort to encourage people to go home after evening prayers.
First of all, we want to be different. Secondly, to create a deterrent effect because ‘pocong’ is spooky and scary.”
Anjar Pacaningtyas, Head of the Youth Volunteer Group
Since Indonesia has been experiencing a rise in the number of confirmed cases and virus-related deaths, they began to try something new; due to the fear that the true scale of infection country-wide is much worse than statistics show, the started talking through fear. So we were fascinated when we found out that the locals were forming volunteer groups dressed as the trapped souls of the dead. The head of Kepuh village decided, with the hope that it would help to keep people indoors, safe, and healthy.
Residents still lack awareness about how to curb the spread of Covid-19 disease. They want to live like normal so it is very difficult for them to follow the instruction to stay at home.
Priyadi, Kepuh Village Head
Unexpectedly, it initially had the opposite effect, saying that people would venture out in search of the pocong, but by deploying these troops at more random times that things have improved–parents and children have been staying at home. There has been success not just due to the horror factor, but because it has reminded residents of the potentially deadly outcome of contracting the disease.
Using Horror to Flatten the Curve
Pocong refers to a fabric shroud that is used to wrap a corpse before it’s ready to be buried; in Muslim burials, the body is tied just above its head, around the neck, and under its feet. According to local legends, the soul of the deceased would continue on in the realm of the living for forty days and that at the end of this forty-day period, the body must be untied so that the soul could be set free. If the body is not untied and the soul does not get released, the corpse would become a pocong, taking on the form of a ghost. Since the pocong is tied at its feet, it can’t walk or run in a typical fashion, so instead, it rolls or hops along the roads looking for someone to set it free. While this may seem like a silly way to move around, it’s said to be able to leap fifty meters (approximately 164 feet) at a time.
So is the pocong the answer to a lack of social distancing? Perhaps–but there is folklore to suggest that if you’re brave enough to hug a pocong and then untie its shroud you can release the soul of the pocong, causing a really grateful spirit to kindly grant you with wealth.
Georgia-based author and artist, Mary has been a horror aficionado since the mid-2000s. Originally a hobby artist and writer, she found her niche in the horror industry in late 2019 and hasn’t looked back since. Mary’s evolution into a horror expert allowed her to express herself truly for the first time in her life. Now, she prides herself on indulging in the stuff of nightmares.
Mary also moonlights as a content creator across multiple social media platforms—breaking down horror tropes on YouTube, as well as playing horror games and broadcasting live digital art sessions on Twitch.
When you think of a mermaid, you may conjure images of a kind-hearted, beautiful half-fish, half-human or the dangerous siren that can lure sailors to their death—however, the Inuit legend of the Qalupalik is a little bit different. The Qalupalik is likewise a creature of the sea, but she is more often thought of as a water spirit, a sea monster, or a demon. In this respect, it is said to be more similar to the Japanese Kappa, a water demon who steals children and consumes them. Folklore recorded from Inuit sources are purposefully vague on whether or not the Qalupalik is the only one of her kind, or whether there are great numbers of these monsters living in the Arctic seas, but she is regularly referenced as being a single creature.
Legend of the Inuit Siren
Photography by Li Yang
In Alaskan and Canadian Inuit culture, there are Arctic ocean-dwelling creatures known as Qalupaliit (kah-loo-pah-leet)—unlike other mythical mermaids and sirens, there is absolutely nothing attractive about the Qalupalik. Despite the persistent popular mermaid princess culture that surrounds much of the lore of this aquatic creature’s cousins in lore, the Qalupalik (kah-loo-pah-leek) is not described as having any pleasant features, let alone an amenable demeanor. Wraith-like in appearance, her long black hair is perpetually plastered to her sallow, slimy, scaly skin—her ghastly despondent face is paired with her dark and hollow eyes. These creatures are often depicted as having fins that jut out of their heads, backs and arms, and their webbed feet and hands are topped with long sharp claws—all of this is enough to strike terror into the hearts of the children that the Qalupalik preys upon.
The Qalupalik is rumored to reek of sulfur—you know, the smell of rotting eggs? So it’s curious that she would ever get close enough to someone without them noticing, but adventurous children who don’t heed the warnings of their parents are the ones she seeks to claim; she hums beautiful melodies to lure them to the icy banks of the ocean’s shore where she snatches them up and stuffs them in her amauti, a duck-skin coat similar to a parka with a pouch for young children to be carried in. It’s quite normal for Inuit parents to caution their children about the dreadful Qalupalik and they would do so frequently, telling their children that if they hear the humming noise near the shore that the Qalupalik is near. Unfortunately for children, the humming is similar to that of a Siren’s song, as it is meant to entice children to come closer to the shore or out onto the dangerously thin ice.
Those who have sighted the Qalupalik report that these creatures can only be seen for an instant before they are gone, but the child victims of the Qalupalik would not be as lucky. She would leap out from under the water, sink her shark claws into their flesh and drag them forward into the water. It is said, once she seizes a child, she takes them down to the freezing depths of the ocean where she either eats them, or takes them away enchanting them with sleep and feeding off of their youth so that she may remain young forever; the child is never to be seen or heard from by their family again. Alternatively, the child would get a brief glimpse of the face of the Qalupalik, which might resemble a woman’s face that had turned green and bloated from rotting and under the sea—this child would experience their last few moments of life in pain as the freezing water rushed into their open, screaming throat, and feel the blood in their veins freeze as they heard the distant voices of their family, crying out their name.
So what purpose does the myth of the Qalupalik serve for the Inuit society? Well, the harsh arctic environment within which the Inuit people live is terrifying and dangerous; within a community that works so hard to survive, the parents and elders used storytelling as a way of aiding in the upbringing and survival of the children of the village. Essentially, the use of scare-tactics was a way for children to avoid the dangerous aspects of their environment when they were alone,. The story of the Qalupalik was created to encourage these children to fear to be alone near the dangerous shores of the sea, where they could easily fall prey to the natural elements by either drowning or dying from hypothermia.
Photography by Jana Sabeth
Tales & Traditions: Qallupilluit
The Central Eskimo (1888) recorded by Franz Boas
An old woman lived with her grandson in a small hut. As they had no kinsmen they were very poor. A. few Inuit only took pity on them and brought them seal’s meat and blubber for their lamp”. Once upon a time, they were very hungry and the boy cried. The grandmother told him to be quiet, but as he did not obey she became angry and called Qallupilluk to come and take him away. He entered at once and the woman put the boy into the large hood, in which he disappeared almost immediately.
Later on the Inuit were more successful in sealing and they had an abundance of meat. Then the grandmother was sorry that she had so rashly given the boy to Qallupilluk and wished to see him back again. She lamented about it to the Inuit, and at length a man and his wife promised to help her.
When the ice had consolidated and deep cracks were formed near the shore by the rise and fall of the tide, the boy used to rise and sit alongside the cracks, playing with a whip of seaweed, Qallupilluk, however, was afraid that somebody might carry the boy away and had fastened him to a string of seaweed, which he held in his hands. The Inuit who had seen the boy went toward him, but as soon as he saw them coming he sang, “Two men are coming, one with a double jacket, the other with a foxskin jacket” (Inung maqong tikitong, aipa mirqosailing. aipa kapiteling). Then Qallupilluk pulled on the rope and the boy disappeared. He did not want to return to his grandmother, who had abused him.
Some time afterward the Inuit saw him again sitting near a crack. They took the utmost caution that he should not hear them when approaching, tying pieces of deerskin under the soles of their boots. But when they could almost lay hold of the boy he sang, “Two men are coming, one with a double jacket, the other with a foxskin jacket.” Again Qallupilluk pulled on the seaweed rope and the boy disappeared.
The man and his wife, however, did not give up trying. They resolved to wait near the crack, and on one occasion when the boy had just come out of the water they jumped forward from a piece of ice behind which they had been hidden and before he could give the alarm they had cut the rope and away they went with him to their huts.
The boy lived with them and became a great hunter.
Nunavut Animation Lab: Qalupalik
Nunavut Animation Lab created an animated version of one of the traditional tales about the Qalupalik, just like all of the folklore originating in Alaskan Native culture, there is always a moral to the story. This is an example of one told to children, to inform them of the dangers of not obeying their parents and wandering by the icy coastal waters on their own. Not to be mistaken with her more traditional lore, the video (linked below) describes a circumstance where the child who was kidnapped is rescued by his father, which of course is not what would typically happen if a child were kidnapped by this Inuit monster of the deep.
Mythical Monsters Podcast: Qalupalik
Another excellent resource for this particular mythical beast is Mythical Monsters Podcast who produced this podcast episode entitled “Qalupalik”. Check it out below!
The Qalupalik by Elisha Kilabuk
The Qalupalik (2011)
An even less traditional take on the legend of the Qalupalik was fairly recently made into a children’s book, but it errs more on the side of child-friendly, where it suggests that despite her frightful appearance, she is rather easily tricked. It’s clear through all of the recent reimaginings of the legend of the Qalupalik that this story is still very widely told within Inuit communities, where the parents and teachers alike share this story with the children of the village in order to protect them from a curious and wandering nature.
The Qalupalik (2011) by Elisha Kilabuk is a mystical Inuit tale that has been reworked from its original well-known narrative. In the original folk tale, the children are always considered the victims and much like the grim nature of the folk tales told by the Brothers Grimm, the story ends without coming to the realization of a happy ending. In this version, we see the new tradition of vulnerable children, or the underdog, outsmarting the monster that happens to be bigger, older, and stronger than themselves; an orphan gets the better of the Qalupalik and survives an encounter with the monster.
This is the first book in the Inhabit Media’s Unikkakuluit Series, which features traditional native folklore being retold in new and interesting ways—while these stories pay homage to the original oral tradition of storytelling, they give the newest generation their own stories to identify with. Despite illustrator Joy Ang creating an incredibly frightening visage for these creatures, her illustrations are incredible and the story they sit alongside can give the meekest child reassurance that even the scariest of opponents will have a weakness that can be exploited.
“Tales and Traditions.” The Central Eskimo: Introd. by Henry B. Collins, by Franz Boas, Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of Ethnology, 1888, pp. 212–213.
Georgia-based author and artist, Mary has been a horror aficionado since the mid-2000s. Originally a hobby artist and writer, she found her niche in the horror industry in late 2019 and hasn’t looked back since. Mary’s evolution into a horror expert allowed her to express herself truly for the first time in her life. Now, she prides herself on indulging in the stuff of nightmares.
Mary also moonlights as a content creator across multiple social media platforms—breaking down horror tropes on YouTube, as well as playing horror games and broadcasting live digital art sessions on Twitch.
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