MYSTERY WIRE — Is there a connection between UFO sightings and the bizarre mutilations of animals, especially cattle?
Across North America, there are a handful of locations where multiple, seemingly paranormal events are concentrated, including a ranching area in Elbert County, Colorado which is just southeast of Denver.
The public is now familiar with Utah’s Skinwalker Ranch, a place where, for decades, locals have reported a concentrated cornucopia of bizarre events including UFO sightings, orbs, unknown creatures, and grisly animal mutilations.
Skinwalker Ranch has been the focus of a documentary film and now has its own television program. But there are other similar hotspots.
The animal mutilation mystery first came to national prominence in the mid 70’s after hundreds of cattle (and a few horses) were discovered all over the state, many of them carved up with surgical precision. One of the areas that was hard hit by mystery mutilators was Elbert County, where ranchers endured a multi-year onslaught of weirdness.
Some of the evidence was presented at the recent UFO Mega Conference in Laughlin, Nevada.
Author Katie Griboski’s family owned the ranch at the epicenter of the paranormal events.
“We experienced some really scary frightening things out on that Ranch,” Griboski told Mystery Wire. “Strange boxes, helicopters, menacing people, paranormal activity, circles on the ground. The mutilations not only of horse but of sheep. There was a sheep, a horse, and many hundreds of cattle almost occurring daily.”
To this day, no one has ever been caught or arrested for these animal mutilations.
Griboski’s new book, “Letters of Love and Light: Four Decades of UFO Sightings and Encounters Shared with Dr. Leo Sprinkle PhD” is a compilation of UFO witness statements given to Dr. Leo Sprinkle. Griboski said, “I went to research the ranch, 82 boxes were at the Heritage Center in Laramie, boxes and boxes of this pioneer’s work. Handwritten letters from people all around the world from the ’60s ’70s ’80s ’90s.”
She took more than three years to organize the letters into her new book.
Dr. Sprinkle’s letters also took her down a path that eventually led her to Roswell and the infamous 1947 incident. Now, she is researching a story of a possible recovered being from the Roswell incident that involves a child-sized casket, a mortician, and her chance encounter with the mortician’s widow in an assisted living community.
Katie Griboski sat down with Mystery Wire’s Duncan Phenix to tell this story. The video of the interview is at the top of this page, and below you can read the transcript.
Duncan Phenix
So Katie, just for background. Tell us a little bit about your background. How did you get into this topic? What is your topic? And how did you get involved in these sorts of conferences and sharing your love of this work?
Katie Griboski
Right. Well, at heart I’m a researcher. I love to go to archives. I love to go through documents. I experienced some things as a young girl on a ranch in Colorado. In UFO folklore it was known as Clearview Colorado. Sometimes people refer to it as the Rocky Mountain Ranch. However, it’s in Elbert County, Colorado. So my sister and I spent a handful of times out there. It’s kind of a long, convoluted story. My mom worked for United Airlines, divorced my father in ’73 and met a gentleman in ’75. He and his family, so he and his wife were separated at the time, she had a new love interest. They had three sons, they own the ranch property. So the two younger sons and the father lived with us during the week to commute back and forth to United Airlines computer center. And the two younger boys went to a bigger High School in Colorado, Cherry Creek High School. The oldest son stayed on the ranch. So every Sunday night, we’d hear of you know, at the time 1975 to 1978 it was high cattle mutilation time, Linda Moulton Howe did a lot of investigative work out there. I don’t claim to be a cattle mutilation expert like Chuck Zukowski’s wheelhouse and Christopher O’brien’s wheelhouse, but we experienced some really scary frightening things out on that Ranch, which I just gave the presentation on here today. Strange boxes, helicopters, menacing people, paranormal activity, circles on the ground. The mutilations not only of horse but of sheep. There was a sheep, a horse, and many hundreds of cattle almost occurring daily. So my passion is research and interviewing these folks. I know, people will ask me like, why research something that happened over 40 years ago, giving away my age. But the answer to that is, it’s personal to me. Number one. Number two, the activity still occurring. As I’ve learned at this conference, there’s other ranches that encounter strange boxes and strange noises and Sasquatch creatures. There is white Sasquatch, they called them white fuzzies out there at the time. So we haven’t solved what this is yet. We had confirmation and things through NORAD and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation was involved. And if you know, Elbert County just is not too far from, you know, Colorado Springs Air Force Academy and Camp Carson and that. So it’s just been a passion. I started investigating this back in 2012. I joined MUFON. Came in as a field investigator and worked my way up the ranks and did my due diligence with cases and I just love interviewing people and asking those questions because even Project Bluebook, they were really focused on nuts and bolts craft, you know, we saw sphere, we saw this, we felt that. And now you can go back all these years later and say well, wait a minute, what about the high strangeness stuff? Did you have paranormal stuff going on in your house? Have you seen these weird blue orbs or the orange orbs? Or, you know, or or. So, you know, that’s what I enjoy doing?
Duncan Phenix
With the ranch? We’ll talk about that real quick. It’s been compared to Skinwalker Ranch, which seems everybody knows these days, it has its own TV show, right? Would you rank it as that sort of… ?
Katie Griboski
Well, it’s interesting, and I started the presentation. What I really want people to understand is, when I was a kid, we were threatened not to talk about this by disembodied electrical voices. Your friends will remain silent concerning us. Okay, we’ve allowed you to remain. It was terrifying ,the stuff. And I grew up, I mean, I always had memories of these things that occurred. I witnessed one of these disappearing boxes, but I never knew it was reported. I never knew anybody knew anything about it. And so one day in 2013, I came across a book, “Hunt for the Skinwalker” by George Knapp and Colm Kelleher. And I’m reading the book not knowing anything about Skinwalker Ranch. I’m just thinking it had the word ranch on it. And I come to their chapter, other hotspots. And in there they talk about the Colorado ranch. There’s several pages in that book talking about our family’s ranch. And of course, the names and the location were changed, but I knew because of the weird dynamic of the family, like that’s it. And so it was through George’s book that I learned that Dr. Leo Sprinkle. John Derr and Peter Van Arsdale were the initial investigators out there on the property. And so called my state director at the time timeline he needed to get in touch with Leo Sprinkle. Got in touch with him. He wrote me a letter back really quickly, handwritten letter. He doesn’t do computers or internet or anything confirming that yes, this is the blank ranch in Elbert County and I was out there (the) next week, looking through all the original files. And then John Schuessler bestowed upon me the original briefing document for back in the day. It was chock full of interesting information and it’s just been a rabbit hole that I’ve jumped in. And I can’t get out of it now. On Dr. Leo Sprinkle though, one night in a dream, what happened, I went to research the ranch, 82 boxes are at the Heritage Center in Laramie, boxes and boxes of this pioneer’s work. Handwritten letters from people all around the world from the ’60s ’70s ’80s ’90s. And so for three and a half years, I put together “Letters of Love and Light, Four Decades of UFO Sightings and Encounters Shared with Dr. Leo Sprinkle PhD.” So these are all the juicy parts of letters that I organized into chapters, I even found a pre snowflake Arizona, Travis Walton abduction from 1937, which is really interesting. And I’ve got to know Leo really, really well. And to do this book, one thing this book did for me is make me very humble very fast. Because when you’re looking at the lifetime work of a pioneer like Dr. Sprinkle, you realize that we’re just reinventing the wheel. You know, when I’m like, Oh, I’m really on to something with these crystals, and this frequency, and vibration. They were talking about that in the 60s, you know. So, for me, it’s a mission of just trying to find just little bits of new information that we can share. And, you know, I like to hide away in dusty boxes, but at some point you come out and you share it. So that’s where I am right now on my path is sharing.
Duncan Phenix
And as you hinted at you do you have some information that you’re researching right now goes back a few years. Tell us about that.
Katie Griboski
This is a case that came to me a couple years ago. Brigadier General Arthur Exon. And there was rumored that one of the Roswell bodies from ’47 was taken to a mortuary outfit in Denver is the exact quote. And as fate would have it, and some weird synchronicities happen. I received this case from the morticians… her father was best friends with the mortician Lou. Lou just recently passed away, I was glad I got a camera out there and interviewed him. Out of California, I was assigned the case and got to meet Lou and his wife and hear about the caper that he pulled off. He was a mortician at a mortuary off in Denver. And in the basement was a room where they stored the chairs and in the corner was a vault and it had sat there for years and years and years and years. And he never really thought there was a body and there was like a body wouldn’t be sitting there. And they were told never to touch it. It was actually on hold from a judge. Okay, so there was a court ordered hold on this body for years. And I’ve been researching now because in this field, I’m trying to get all my ducks in a row and documents because this is quite a story. He pulls this caper, he opens the vault and in the vault is a child size casket. He opens it up, this body is soaked in seven layers of formaldehyde cloth, peels back the layers of cloth, all the visceral in the body is removed. The genitals are completely cut out. Little orifices for ears, almost no mouth, very heavy brow, not as big-eyed as some of the ET’s but smaller. So he didn’t connect it to ET at the time. He wasn’t into any of that. He thought hydrocephalic child, but it was very unusual because my first question was why don’t you take pictures? Why didn’t you … it was an alien Roswell body. He didn’t connect that at the time. He felt he violated this little being, right. This little malformed child, put everything back, closed it up and didn’t think about it again and it just sat there. Then he was a hang glider. So he just happened to be in Roswell, New Mexico, talked to Ramey or somebody, heard about the rumor that there was maybe one of the bodies held in a mortuary up in Denver. Ding ding ding ding ding ding, Oh my gosh, right. So I started investigating the judge trying to find any document I can because if you’re holding something legally there has to be paperwork on there. Problem is you need to file a number or name. What do you name it? So I’ve been going to the Eisenhower Archives. Of course Eisenhower’s have a strong Denver connection with Mamie being from Denver. But the judge, what I learned about him, 33 degree Mason, the lodge is actually not too far from Fitzsimmons and Lowery at the time. So pieces are starting to fall into place around this case. My mother was an independent living facility, and they asked me to come do a little presentation, UFOs 101. So I did that, I’m like okay, sure, do UFOs 101. And I was talking to the nice folks in the home about this Roswell body case, and the judge and one of the lady goes, “Sherm? His widow is on the fifth floor. You want me to go get her?” I’m like, you’ve got to be kidding me. And so I’ve done two interviews with the judge’s wife and learn about the Eisenhower connection to that. I think I know where the little body is, not ready to say it yet, sorry people. But yeah, because I need to have my ducks in a row for that. But that’s truly, I mean the ranch phenomenon (is) very interesting. So I have two kinds of love or interests that I’m really pursuing heavily. And of course, COVID cut all that down with archives, everything was shut down. So I’m anxious to get back on the horse and pursue that. Talked a lot to Bob Wood about it actually, at one of the symposiums and, you know, I got people going, you go you go, girl, you know, so yeah.
Duncan Phenix
Are you working with anyone else on this?
Katie Griboski
No, but I would love to have a team. I mean, I’ve been kind of going both the ranch phenomenon, I have my close friends that, you know, absolutely helped me and supported me. But this kind of research in this kind of work takes teams. And I haven’t had that. But I’m certainly open to that. I’m all about sharing of information, especially meeting Dwayne and Trey and James here about the other ranches. I’m all about like, here, here’s what I got. Let’s figure this out, you know, especially with these weird boxes.
Duncan Phenix
What is your take on the current situation of not only with Skinwalker getting so much attention, but the Navy videos, the national news media paying attention and taking this topic as a whole seriously?
Katie Griboski
I think it’s fascinating and shocking in my personal belief. Well, there you ask the kind of two questions. So why are the ranches becoming more popular and out front? Well, we got to owe that to George Knapp and Skinwalker Ranch, of course, and the show, and it’s being pushed out there. So all of a sudden, not only are we learning of all these other metro and these other locations, not just in the United States, but around the world. So that’s great. And it’s there’s nothing more important than connecting these places together and going and what I mean the high magnetism, they’re very highly magnetized area. So what’s that about? The Navy videos on Lou Elizondo, and To The Stars and that, I feel that they’re trying to get ahead of something, like they knew, something’s coming. I’ve talked to so many people that have this sense of like, something’s on the horizon, right, that some big something. And I think for decades, we’ve had a slow drip. I think they’re trying to get ahead of something and prepare the public for whatever this news is going to be. I don’t think we’re going to learn nothing explosive all at once. You know, I think we’ll be like womp, womp, wah, a little bit. But there’s nothing bad about this coming to the forefront. Because before, you know, even just two years ago, when they said, what do you do, Katie? Because I was a graphic designer and I have my degree in Visual Communications. And I stopped all that to do this full time. And to write the book. And they’re like, really, why? And now with all this coming out, almost every day, there’s something on the news. I’m like, yeah, you see, you know, so that’s kind of nice.
