OMG This book couldn't end soon enough. It was SUCH a slog. If you're looking for the actual rigorous science testing, data, and methodology to back up all the bigfoot and UFO sightings at this little ranch in Utah DON'T HOLD YOUR BREATH! There is literally none of that!! It's a bunch of he said, she said weird sightings of paranormal activity. And it's not just at this ranch; the author feels the need to bring up cases all over the US and that does nothing to add to the story. I guess he's just trying to prove weird shit happens all over?! Stupid, long, repetitive. God I wish the aliens would beam this author up into their UFO. ( )

What a massive, steaming pile of crap.

For a book that pushes the agenda of investigating the paranormal with extreme scientific rigor, and presenting those, the first sentence of the book opens with the writer extrapolating thoughts of people. The Gormans' are presented as perfect humans. Mr. Gorman has perfect eyesight, is an expert marksman and tracker, etc, etc.

Every witness is totally credible, not a crackpot in the bunch. Every single event, typically witnessed by only one or two people, is accepted as fact.

And the scientific rigor? Yeah, good luck finding that in this book. You get a bunch of non-connected stories to warm you up for the next happening at the Gorman ranch, and then it's all blown off as this is the first and the last time we witnessed this. I saw no true evidence of any scientific rigor, only mention of many recording and measuring devices.

And the last few chapters are just laugh out loud funny.

A massive disappointment. Not worth the paper it's printed on. ( )

The Hunt for the Skinwalker by Colm Kelleher, Ph. D and George Knapp was a bizarre and silly book posing as a story of scientific research into some strange occurrences on a ranch in Utah. I choose this book to read for a challenge as I was under the illusion that it was about the legendary Bigfoot, and although Bigfoot was indeed mentioned, so were witches, aliens, were-creatures, ghosts and a Navajo Skinwalker.

These strange events included vanishing and mutilated cattle, the appearance of strange creatures, disappearing objects, unexplained lights, and flying orbs. A research team lead by Colm Kelleher spent hundreds of days and nights at the ranch and investigative journalist George Knapp was allowed to witness and document the team’s work. Unfortunately, the resulting book read more like a titillating tale of unexplained phenomena than a scientific report. I find it laughable that the book has the subtitle of “Science Confronts the Unexplained” as I got the distinctive feeling that this is an effort by the authors to embellish upon the events in order to make money.

Although the book opens with the author whining about the loss of respect both he and Colm Kelleher have experienced because they made the effort to look into these events. I think perhaps the loss of respect may actually be because the book is silly, the writing sloppy, and instead of scientific research, the end result is a piece of delusional weirdness based on here-say and folklore. ( )

I just couldn't finish this - good luck if you can. It had a great start and interesting initial stories but then just got wilder and wilder, and wow, talk about flowery writing (and reading... that narrator really has strong "ghost story" foo). Using "science" in the title was a bit disingenuous - it kinda sorta started out using testing and science-like activities but then veered full on into the "that couldn't be the answer so don't test it" narratives. Full of "just missed it"s and "didn't have my camera"s and, quite honestly, if *I* were in a scary place at night, I would TURN ON THE LIGHTS! ( )

To put it bluntly, the information in this might be interesting to those looking for something involving UFOlogy, as the anecdotal evidence is mainly concerned with floating orbs, strange flying shapes, and cattle mutilations. However, the title is almost completely misleading in that there is very little evidence or exploration of skinwalkers.

There is a moderate level of anecdotal evidence supplied here, though the author repeatedly keep saying there is so much to discuss. So where is the evidence? And where are the skinwalkers?

What you really have here is a few descriptions of UFO-like sightings, and a couple of descriptions of possible cryptozoological creature sightings and experiences coupled with speculation on seemingly inter-dimensional portals on a ranch in Northeastern Utah. The bulk of the book is background information on UFOs, including a lot of history and examples of similar incidents in places other than Skinwalker Ranch. Essentially, a lot of filler, even in the portion of the book that is supposed to be discussing actual evidence but then goes on into a history of Sasquatch sightings in different parts of the world.

At one point, the author even states, "the title of this book mentions a hunt for skinwalkers, so it's fair to ask whether we found any." This is contained in the Aftermath and Hypotheses section, which you can correctly determine to mean that there is little or no substantial discussion of skinwalkers previous to this. This last section is more interesting than the rest of the book, as it tries to formulate possibilities for the events on the ranch while parsing through different orthodox and unorthodox theories for paranormal activities. However, this is not enough to justify the time wasted on the entirety of the book nor the misleading title. ( )