The owner of Skinwalker Ranch says his research team has pulled manufactured material from hundreds of feet inside a rocky mesa on the Utah property, deepening speculation about what may be buried beneath one of America's most storied paranormal sites.
Brandon Fugal, who purchased the 512-acre ranch in Utah's northeast from aerospace entrepreneur Robert Bigelow in 2016, made the claims on the American Alchemy podcast hosted by Jesse Michels. He said drilling equipment repeatedly struck a mysterious underground object before extracting material that did not match the surrounding landscape.
"There's something under the mesa," Fugal said. "To be extracting material that is manufactured, that's engineered, from hundreds of feet within the mesa."
What the drilling found
Researchers began drilling into the mesa in 2021 after ground-penetrating radar detected possible underground voids and an unusual formation. Fugal said the original intent was to debunk longstanding rumors of caves, tunnels or artificial structures beneath the rocks.
"We thought, well, let's debunk it," Fugal said, adding that the team instead found a debris field of material inconsistent with the area's natural soil and rock composition.
Samples recovered through two boreholes included fragments resembling heat-resistant ceramic tiles used on spacecraft. Fugal also claimed some samples produced electromagnetic signatures that appeared to restore themselves after being disrupted, though he did not provide technical details about the alleged effect.
Michels said the elements europium and thallium had been identified in material recovered from the mesa. Europium is a rare-earth element used in electronics and fluorescent materials; thallium is a toxic metal with industrial applications. Both occur naturally on Earth and are used in human manufacturing, meaning their presence alone does not indicate an extraterrestrial origin.
Drill failures and a 1964 coin
Fugal said every drilling crew brought to the site experienced significant equipment failures while attempting to penetrate what appeared to be a hard obstruction inside the formation.
"Their tungsten carbide steel drill bits, some of the most durable available, have been rendered completely damaged and unusable," he said. "These men perform drilling operations all over the world. They drill through solid granite. They drill through mountains."
The investigation is advancing slowly because, Fugal said, aggressive excavation could destroy whatever lies inside. He compared the approach to a medical biopsy, with researchers taking small samples to avoid damaging the larger formation.
A weathered nickel dated 1964 was also recovered from inside the formation. Archaeologist Chris Roberts reportedly told the team that workers at excavation sites sometimes leave a contemporary coin to mark when the ground was disturbed. Fugal said the coin raises the possibility that someone entered or dug into the mesa during the 1960s, well before the ranch became publicly known for paranormal activity.
Examining historical aerial photographs, Fugal claimed much of the available aerial record for the period between 1964 and 1969 was missing, and that a section of a 1969 image appeared blurred or smoothed over in a teardrop shape above the same area where radar later detected the underground anomaly.
The 'bubble' and unanswered questions
The team has also identified what it calls the "bubble," an invisible, roughly spherical anomaly believed to extend above and below part of the ranch. Fugal said researchers used LiDAR and other instruments to map the region after repeatedly experiencing GPS failures, signal interference and equipment malfunctions within its boundaries.
When Michels asked directly whether a UFO was buried inside the mesa, Fugal stopped short of endorsing that conclusion. "We'll see," he replied, noting that an underground object could not technically be described as flying.
No spacecraft has been uncovered, and the extracted material has not been conclusively linked to extraterrestrial technology or examined in a published, peer-reviewed study. Critics have noted that most of the evidence has been presented through the History Channel series The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch rather than through scientific literature that would allow independent researchers to scrutinize the samples, methods and complete data.
Ground-penetrating radar can detect differences in rock density and underground cavities but cannot confirm that an anomaly is an artificial structure or buried spacecraft. Damaged drill bits and malfunctioning instruments can also have conventional mechanical, environmental or geological explanations.
Fugal said he welcomes skeptical scrutiny. "We're led by the data, not an inherited narrative," he said.
