Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado. (image credit: NPS/Patrick Myers)

Tonight the Travel Channel will be premiering an episode of their Ultimate Travel series dedicated to UFO hot spots and other paranormal activity related to US national parks. The episode is titled, Legends of the Parks, and for those of you wanting to visit a national park, but would also like the chance for a paranormal experience, you will want to take notes.

Judy Messoline, proprietor of the UFO Watchtower. (image credit: roadsideamerica.com)

Paranormal super-guru and UFO expert, Alejandro Rojas (me), helps guide the audience through mysterious stories surrounding some of our country’s most beautiful locations. One such place is the Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado. These strange dunes provide a hint of the Sahara desert in the high mountain plains of Colorado. As a Colorado native, the sand dunes have always been one of my favorite camping locations. In the middle of the mysterious San Luis Valley, a UFO hot spot and host to a wide variety of paranormal activities, guests to the Sand Dunes have also reported many UFO sightings. Ultimate Travel visited with Judy Messoline, the proprietor of the UFO Watchtower, just west of the dunes. From the spectacular view off her patio, she has recorded dozens of UFO sighting reports from visitors.

I actually had my first UFO sighting at the UFO Watchtower with Judy. I was there for the first time with my sister, her boyfriend and a friend of mine. My sister said she saw a satellite, but I could tell from her voice she was excited. We looked out to the west over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and saw a very bright light moving from north to south just over the mountains. As it got directly east of us, right over the sand dunes, it steadily faded out. It was much too low on the horizon to be a satellite and there was no outline of a plane. As if that wasn’t strange enough, it was soon completely dark and we saw what appeared to be two satellites, one coming from the southwest, one from the northwest, and they crossed paths just above where we saw the UFO fade out.

The UFO Watchtower (image credit: Chuck Zukowski/UFONut.com)

The San Luis Valley is also the location of the very first cattle mutilation to hit the media, and many more of these mysterious animals deaths have taken place in the area since. In 1967 on the King ranch outside of Alamosa, the largest city in the valley, an Appaloosa horse name Lady (renamed Snippy by the press) was found with the head and neck de-fleshed. The exposed bones were clean and white, without blood. The cuts were cauterized, leading a local pathologist out of Denver to speculate that they were done with a laser scalpel. Laser scalpels were practically science fiction in 1967. Often in these mutilations organs such as the genitals and utters appear to be carefully removed. Ranchers and local authorities are often perplexed and left without answers.

Brown Mountain Lights marker. (image credit: coolthingsworld.com)

Other phenomena explored on the show are the Brown Mountain lights of Northern Carolina. This historic mystery goes back decades. Many have seen lights on the mountains that have yet to be explained. The legend of the Jersey Devil, ghosts and mysterious sounds in Yellowstone National Park, Bigfoot in Arizona, and many other paranormal oddities are explored on the program. The show airs tonight, September 20, at 6 pm and 9 pm E/P, and will re-air periodically.

Chuck Zukowski (image credit: PostInteractive.net)

Manuel Sanchez, a rancher outside of the town of San Luis, Colorado suffered the loss of four calves due to mysterious mutilations in 2009, and this month he has lost another.

The string of mutilations in 2009 began with a fury in March with two animals on three different ranches in and around the San Luis Valley dying of mysterious causes. Authorities, including the local branding inspector, and ranchers could not determine how the animals were killed. In each case there were no signs of a struggle, nor a speck of blood nearby, indicators of a predator kill. The deaths didn’t end in March; by the end of 2009 eight animals were killed, four of those belonging to Sanchez.

Upset with the authorities’ inability to explain what happened to his animals, and feeling helpless to stop the killings, Sanchez sold off his remaining calves in 2009. His animals have been safe up until this month, when on May 17 he found one of his missing adult female cows apparently mutilated similarly to the calves in 2009.

The 2009 wave was investigated by Chuck Zukowski, micro-chip engineer and paranormal investigator out of Colorado Springs. Sanchez informed Zukowski of this new animal and invited him out to take a look. When they got to the animal, they found it had been burnt. A nearby rancher that also uses the land where the animal was found burnt the animal. It is a standard practice in the area to keep dogs and other animals from picking at it and possibly spreading disease. Although the animal was burnt, this was mostly just on the outside of the carcass. It luckily had not been incinerated.

Zukowski examines the carcass. (image credit: PostInteractive.net)

Upon inspection, as with the earlier cases, there were no signs of a struggle, nor splattering of blood, so it didn’t look like a predator had killed it. They also noted that the animal’s tracks leading to the area looked normal, the animal’s pace was not abnormal and did not indicate that it was having problems walking. It appeared that the cow just fell over, with no indication as to why or how it died. There was also a missing area of hide under the animal, exposing the rib cage. Zukowski measured the missing hide to be 27 by 42 inches.

Because the animal had been burnt, any tissue samples would not have been helpful. However, Zukowski did measure for abnormal EMF, and also scanned it with a magnetic wand, but the readings were not unusual.

Zukowski and Miller were left with no answers. In the past Zukowski has worked with a veterinary professor out of Colorado State University, and although they are willing to perform a necropsy and examine samples, the animal needs to be found within a couple of days of its death. That is obviously difficult, as is transporting an animal, and of course the burning of the carcass further hampers analysis.

Cattle mutilations often happen in small waves, as was demonstrated in 2009, so it is possible another one may occur in the area soon. Hopefully, the rancher affected seeks help and is able to get in touch with Zukowski, until then he will be ready and waiting.

You can read more about this case at UFONut.com, and in the video below.

The Sanchez mutilation, the carcass is in the bottom left of this picture. (image credit: Chuck Zukowski)

A rancher outside of Colorado’s oldest town, San Luis, has been struck with a string of cattle mutilations that have left him baffled and distraught. On Oct. 25, Manuel Sanchez found two calves with their chests cored out, all of the organs seemingly carefully removed. There were no signs of struggle, and no pooling of blood, so it didn’t appear to be the work of a predator.

Inside the rib cage, all organs have been carefully removed. (image credit: Chuck Zukowski)

However, Sanchez was not able to find footprints, tire tracks, or any other indications that foul play by humans was involved either. Even if it were humans, he says he is unable to explain how a human could have cleanly killed the animals and removed their organs with no indications of their presence.

Unfortunately, this was not the end of Sanchez’s ordeal.  A few weeks later, on Nov. 9, another calf was found dead. This time, the left side of the animal’s face was removed with “laser-like” cuts. Fed up and convinced this was not the act of predators, Sanchez called the police. A deputy from the Costilla County Sheriff’s office came out and took pictures, but couldn’t provide any answers.

Finally, on Nov. 16, with another calf mutilated and the police unable to do anything to find the perpetrator or to protect his cattle, Sanchez had enough and decided to sell his remaining calves at auction before he lost them all.

Chuck Zukowski

With no answers from local authorities, Manuel’s daughter, Bernadette, searched online for other strange mutilations in the area and found my stories on cattle mutilations that took place just south of the San Luis Valley in Trinidad, Colorado earlier this year. She contacted me, and I got a hold of my colleague, Chuck Zukowski. He is an engineer and a reserve police officer that lives in the area, and he was the researcher who investigated the Trinidad mutilations. Luckily, he was able to get out and take a look.

The Trinidad mutilations took place in March, 2009 just west of town. Three ranchers had cattle mutilated, and all three were at a loss to explain how the animals were killed. Local authorities, press, and the brand inspector were also perplexed. Zukowski worked with them to look for clues and consult them on the cattle mutilations phenomena.

This phenomenon actually started in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, and became famous. The first mysterious mutilation occurred in 1967 on the King ranch outside of Alamosa, only a few miles north of San Luis. The victim was an Appaloosa horse name Lady (renamed Snippy by the press). It was found with the head and neck de-fleshed. The exposed bones were clean and white, without blood. The cuts were cauterized, leading a local pathologist out of Denver to speculate that they were done with a laser scalpel. Laser scalpels were practically science fiction in 1967.

Chuck Zukowski examining carcass in March, 2009 near Trinidad.

Since the King ranch incident in 1967, there have been hundreds of strange animal deaths in the San Luis Valley, often taking place in groups. This held true for the investigations Zukowski and I conducted in March of this year near Trinidad, and this also seems to be the case with Sanchez’s cattle.

When Zukowski arrived on the scene to the most recent mutilation on the Sanchez ranch, he noted that there were no footprints or tire marks to indicate people came to the area.  He also noted the lack of pooled blood, indications of a struggle, or any of the missing remains.  He did find a few teeth marks on the rib cage, and a missing eye ball, both of which appeared to be the work of scavengers after the death of the animal.

Tongues are often taken in mysterious cattle mutilations, and if not, they are usually hanging out of the animal’s mouth.  Since the mouth was closed in this case, Zukowski decided to take a look inside. He had to forcibly pry open the mouth with a garden shovel, and when he did, he found that the tongue had been removed.  It was cut off at least an inch behind the lower teeth.

Zukowski asked Sanchez about predators in the area. Sanchez told him that there had not been any mountain lions spotted recently, although there was a wolf sighting seven miles from the ranch in August.

There had been no military activity or helicopters seen in the area. However, Sanchez did report having sightings of strange lights in the early morning hours in July and August. He saw bright lights that drifted slowly above the pasture between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m., then mysteriously disappeared.

Sanchez calf had no unusual radiation emissions. (image credit: Chuck Zukowski)

Neither Zukowski nor the rancher believes that predators were to blame. The animal’s organs seemed to be carefully and completely removed.  The last animal’s body is twisted, and it was skinned without pools of blood, or a sign of a struggle. Zukowski and the rancher also ruled out foul play because of the lack of signs that would indicate human activity in the area.

Sanchez said that when he first found the last mutilated calf, there was snow on the ground, and the snow was not disturbed by any type of footprints at all. He says he doesn’t believe these animals were killed by predators or humans. He doesn’t know what killed his animals.

This isn’t the first time Sanchez has had to deal with this strange phenomenon. In 2006, he found one of his cows de-fleshed from the face down to the mid-torso. Luckily, in that case, he didn’t continue to lose cattle like he did recently.

More Information:

WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT: Click here to view more pictures from this mutilation, and the 2006 Sanchez mutilation, along with Chuck’s investigation notes.

Chuck Zukowski’s website: www.UFONUT.com

Stories on March 2009 mutilations near Trinidad, CO.

If you have any information regarding recent mutilations in the San Luis Valley, please email: contact@openminds.tv