Frequent Flyers? Those aliens do get around. By Zack Van Eyck Deseret News staff writer For species that supposedly don’t exist, aliens sure do get around. Extraterrestrial beings and the aircraft they purportedly fly in at Skinwalker Ranch have become an indelible part of American and world culture. You can’t watch TV for long anymore without seeing some reference to aliens. It’s as if they’ve hired a slick public relations firm to maximize their exposure.
Even Hollywood has a new fixation with ETs. The much-awaited “Independence Day,” expected to be this summer’s blockbuster, is unleashing an alien invasion of earth at a theater near you this week.
Of course, everyone knows that humans are the only intelligent life in the universe, UFOs don’t exist, all crop circles are faked by two English blokes, cattle mutilations are carried out by laser-wielding coyotes and bigfoot will have a sizable bill to pay if he ever returns that rental costume.
Well, not everyone.
“My personal opinion, not speaking for Hansen Planetarium or Salt Lake County, is that the universe is teeming with life,” said Patrick Wiggins, a spokesman for the planetarium.
“There are more stars in the sky than there are grains of sand on planet earth. The notion that anybody would say that out of that incredible number of stars there is only one planet that has life on it, that’s ludicrous. That’s egocentric to the max.”
Terry and Gwen Sherman wish some of that teeming intergalactic life would find somewhere else to hang out.
For more than a year now the Shermans’ 480-acre ranch just south of Fort Duchesne in Uintah County has been a hotbed for UFOs and bizarre paranormal activity — weirdness that even the Shermans, who’ve witnessed the strange happenings with their own eyes and video camera, have trouble accepting as reality.
“For a long time we wondered what we were seeing, if it was something to do with a top-secret project,” said Terry Sherman, who reluctantly agreed to speak publicly about the activity for the first time. “I don’t know really what to think about it.”
The Shermans, their teenage son and 10-year-old daughter have seen three specific types of UFOs repeatedly during the past 15 months — a small boxlike craft with a white light, a 40- foot-long object and a huge ship the size of several football fields. They’ve seen one craft emit a wavy red ray or light beam as it flies along. They’ve seen other airborne lights, some of which have emerged from orange, circular doorways that seem to appear in midair. They’ve videotaped two of the sightings.
Hard to deal with
The cattle deaths and disappearances have been troubling, both psychologically and financially. Even while the Shermans wonder if they can believe what they’re seeing, their bank account has taken a hit. The mutilators didn’t take just any cows, they took the best ones, Terry said.
“I’ve got a neighbor over here who’s reluctant to talk but he told me they’ve had trouble since he was a small kid and he’s probably 55,” Terry said. “He told me, ‘People will think you’re crazy but you’re not. If you are, then we both have the same problem.’
“Leland Mecham, who lives in nearby Neola, knows the Shermans are not insane. He had two prolonged observations of UFOs, one in the mid-1960s and another a decade later. The second craft he saw was gigantic and had rays of colored light shooting out from its underbelly. After it scanned the landscape, it elevated, streaked across the sky and was gone in an instant, Mecham said.
“There’s no way it was swamp gas or balloons like everybody tries to pass it off,” Mecham said. “I was probably as skeptical as any man alive, but when I saw these, in my opinion, they had to be operated by somebody. It couldn’t be any other way. And I don’t think there’s anything we’ve got that could move that quick.”
The Shermans may never know the cause or reason for what they’ve experienced, but they know one thing — they just want it to stop.