The Meadow Project – Explorations Into The South’s Skinwalker Ranch
A potentially interesting read given the popularity of Skinwalker Ranch (SWR) – the daddy of wierd places. However it just doesn’t come across as wierd enough. The first 20 odd pages are about geocaching which is where the author first came across this site but it’s too much background and comes across as out of place. The rest of the book doesn’t really go deep enough and there’s not too much investigation other than the usual wandering around woods at night.
There’s a lot of orbs, sounds, stick structures (of course) and some calling and mimicking (very interesting) but nothing I would class at the same level as SWR. On one of the occasions they actually experience something worthwhile the investigator forgot to install the memory card. Travis Taylor wouldn’t do that.
I didn’t also appreciate or need loads of pages devoted to hokum like transcripts of ‘conversations’ from ghost boxes. It feels like filler and doesn’t really add anything to the narrative without taking in to account how it’s supposed to work. Example from page 150:
TH : Very good, will we see orbs in the woods or lights in the woods?
DN : Work.
TH : Yes the protocol does take work. Will we see lights or orbs?
DN : Wait
Ghostboxes ‘work’ by quickly scanning across frequencies and picking up sounds which are then intepreted by someone in to actual words. Leaving aside how any intelligence would or could communicate in such a haphazard manner the intepretation is often in favour of the investigator and so vague as to leave an intepretation open as in the example above. The words Work and Wait are single syllable, soft sounding when surrounded by similar radio inteference and easily subject to apophenia which is connecting unrelated things such as random audio data.
In short it’s worth reading just to see another perspective and to have something else to judge SWR by. In any case, all data is good. I can only hope that this area is kept secret so that any phenomena can be observed, recorded and investigated. Maybe there’s a TV show in it?
Footnote:
The book itself is also an Amazon printed copy and they always feel cheap, the covers curl easily and this one, like so many Amazon printed books, contains missed spacing, joined together words and faded out print. There’s some kind of error on almost every page. For £12.50 I expected much more.
Information:
ISBN-13 : 979-8699871476
ASIN : B08M2FY1DS