This remote stretch of high desert is the backdrop to Hunt for the Skinwalker , the latest addition to the “ Extraordinary Beliefs ” documentary series produced by Jeremy Corbell_._ With a runtime of just over two hours, the film is a visually stunning deep dive into the history of one of the strangest and most high-profile UFO investigations ever undertaken. The film features hours of never-before-seen footage collected by the reporter George Knapp during his seminal investigation into the bizarre occurrences at the ranch, which he collected in the 2005 book, Hunt for the Skinwalker. Corbell’s film is nominally a documentary, but it has the heart of a horror flick—a unique thematic combination that perfectly suits its deeply unsettling subject matter.

There’s something strange happening in northeastern Utah. Over the last four decades, residents of Uintah county have reported hundreds of UFO sightings, dozens of bizarre and inexplicable cattle mutilations, encounters with otherworldly beings, and other paranormal activities. Although these sightings are reported throughout the county, they are especially prevalent on a 500-acre plot of land known as Skinwalker Ranch.

The premise of Corbell’s documentary is that AATIP is only half the story. Long before the Times revealed the Pentagon’s secret UFO program, Bigelow was bankrolling the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) , a “living laboratory” on Skinwalker Ranch that represents the largest ever scientific study of unidentified aerial phenomena in history. Bigelow’s UFO lab was founded shortly before he purchased Skinwalker Ranch in the mid-90s and employed several physicists until its operations were shuttered in 2004. These scientists were tasked with studying the multitude of anomalous phenomena reported by the ranch’s previous owners and locals in the surrounding area.

Corbell has been working on Hunt for the Skinwalker for years, but he told me that the publication of the New York Times story last year about the US Department of Defense “Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program” (AATIP) put his documentary team into “overdrive.” According to the Times, the program was created at the behest of Nevada senator Harry Reid and most of its $22 million budget was funneled to Bigelow Aerospace, a company founded in 1999 by the billionaire hotelier Robert Bigelow, a close friend of Reid. Among the many events studied as part of the secretive program was the now infamous “tic tac” UFO spotted by Navy pilots off the coast of San Diego in 2004.

The ridge on the ranch known as the “path of the Skinwalker” for the frequent reports of paranormal activity in the area. Image courtesy of Jeremy Corbell

In 1974, the plant physiologist Frank Salisbury collected hundreds of UFO reports from residents in the Uintah basin region of Utah, which includes Skinwalker Ranch and a Ute reservation. According to Corbell’s documentary, Ute tribal members have recognized the otherworldly phenomena occurring in the area for centuries. They characterize these events as the work of malevolent tricksters, similar to the ghostly “ skinwalkers ” of Navajo folklore.

Skinwalker Ranch first came to Bigelow’s attention in 1996 after a journalist for the Deseret News wrote about the strange phenomena reported by the Sherman family, who had lived on the ranch for years. The Shermans reported dozens of odd events—such as being approached by wolves that wouldn’t die after repeatedly being shot at close range with high powered rifles and brutal cow mutilations that left no trace of blood beside the carcass—but strange phenomena had been reported in the region for years.

Knapp kept his video camera running all during his visits to the ranch and much of this footage is shown for the first time in Corbell’s film. Hunt for the Skinwalker pivots between Corbell’s visits to the ranch last year and Knapp’s old footage to create a detailed portrait of Bigelow’s obsessive, two-decade hunt for extraterrestrials.

After Bigelow established NIDS at Skinwalker Ranch, he hired the biochemist Colm Kelleher as the project’s deputy administrator. Bigelow’s collection of scientists studying “ anomalies ” in a secluded desert research lab quickly garnered the attention of the local press, including Knapp. In a series of articles written in the late 90s for the weekly Las Vegas Mercury, Knapp tagged along with the investigators as they tried to get to the bottom of the strange happenings at Skinwalker Ranch.

“There seem to be more restrictions to accessing the ranch than even our government’s most secret military bases,” Corbell told me in an email. “No footage has been allowed off the ranch—ever. There was a veil of secrecy for two decades, but that veil has been officially lifted by my film.”

In Skinwalker, Corbell places a premium on the testaments of local residents who claim to have seen UFOs or experienced paranormal phenomena in the region. Although the film also features a short interview with Bigelow conducted by Knapp, this plays a surprisingly small role in the film.

“Robert Bigelow has moved on from what he was doing at the Skinwalker Ranch,” Corbell said. “He has never gone on camera publicly about Skinwalker Ranch, so this is the first and likely only time you will ever see that.”

Notably absent are updated interviews with Kelleher and the other scientists who were involved with NIDS. This isn’t all that surprising, given the eye-roll effect the phrase “UFOs” tends to evoke from other scientists and the fact that NIDS turned up next to no scientific evidence of paranormal phenomena occurring at Skinwalker Ranch. Nevertheless, there are documented incidents of bizarre cattle mutilations that are detailed in Corbell’s film that seem to defy all explanation.