The Skinwalker Ranch Connection to Nikola Tesla

I watched one of the new episodes of The Secret of skinwalker Ranch the other night. The use of special imaging techniques led to finding what looked like little tunnels running underground in one area of the property.

That led to trotting out the little excavator and digging up the ground. They found some light-colored veins of dirt, which they analyzed. They contained elements, things like sodium, potassium and whatnot. I couldn’t understand why they didn’t compare that to the surrounding normal-looking dirt, because I think dirt everywhere has those elements in it.

I think one of the scientists/actors, Dr. Travis Taylor, mentioned that this kind of dirt might be able to transmit electricity. That got me thinking about Nikola Tesla and his fascinating experiments with electricity. I’m probably all mixed up about his theories but I think he tried to send electricity through the earth in an effort to show it could be transmitted without wires.

In fact, that led me on my usual wild goose chasing through the internet. I didn’t know Tesla almost died from cholera when he was much younger. I also found out he suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). That led me to a paper that was published in a neuroscience journal in 1999 showing that an intracellular form of cholera toxin was associated with OCD-like behaviors in mice.

Tesla also became friends with Mark Twain, one of my favorite humorists. Tesla used his “earthquake machine” to cure Twain’s constipation—by causing diarrhea.

You can learn a lot about science by watching the skinwalker ranch show. On the History Channel website, it’s subtitled as “science fiction.”

Campbell KM, de Lecea L, Severynse DM, Caron MG, McGrath MJ, Sparber SB, Sun LY, Burton FH. OCD-Like behaviors caused by a neuropotentiating transgene targeted to cortical and limbic D1+ neurons. J Neurosci. 1999 Jun 15;19(12):5044-53. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.19-12-05044.1999. PMID: 10366637; PMCID: PMC6782675.

We took the picture of the Nikola Tesla sculpture at Niagara Falls in 2015.