The Skinwalker Ranch ‘Dog-Headed’ Creature File From 2010

What happened

On Friday 23 October 2026, the Department of War published its seventh tranche of UAP records on war.gov/UFO. Axios counted 10 documents in the batch. One of them, DOW-UAP-D174, is an April 2010 report by Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS) on interviews and fieldwork near Fort Duchesne, Utah. The report’s redacted map places the work around Skinwalker Ranch, a 512-acre property long tied to Paranormal claims. The Daily Mail wrote it up on 24 October.

The footage

There is no video in this case. The evidence is the report itself. Axios notes that it includes no photographs of anything supernatural.

Timeline

• 2008: The Defense Intelligence Agency’s AAWSAP program contracts BAASS (AARO).
• September 2009: A witness reports an eight-foot hairless creature on a horse shelter.
• January 2010: A witness reports a hunched, dog-headed creature hitting a fence.
• February 2010: An aqua-blue light is reported in a tree.
• 22 March 2010: A “growling roar” is reported outside a home around 11 pm.
• 24 March 2010: The January witness is interviewed.
• March–April 2010: BAASS fieldwork.
• March 2024: AARO publishes Historical Record Report Vol. I.
• 23 October 2026: D174 is released.

What witnesses reported

All witnesses are unnamed in the file and here. The January witness described a creature he estimated at six feet and about 250 lb. The report states: “The head was described as looking like a German shepherd dog without the pointed nose.” It adds: “The nose was described to be more similar to a human nose.” He watched from his doorway during a roughly 30-minute episode as the creature repeatedly ran into a barbed-wire fence. He reported another episode two nights before his interview, when his dogs chased the figure.

Other witnesses described a growling roar heard twice, each time lasting five to 10 seconds. One woman described a figure she identified with the Ute “Basket Lady.” There were also orbs near Bottle Hollow Lake, and a “portal” one woman recalled from about 20 years earlier. Axios quotes the report’s summary: “Witnesses have reported unidentified balls of light at close range, daytime sightings of ‘dog-like’ creatures running on two legs, unnatural animalistic howling/screaming.”

What the research found

The DNA. Investigators recovered fur caught on a barb and sent it for laboratory analysis. Two fence samples shared the same canine DNA sequence as a control sample from a dog on the property. According to the Daily Mail, BAASS said the match, the similar hairs and the “freely roaming dogs” strongly suggested a single animal, although the DNA match alone was not definitive. Axios reports that DNA from one clump of hair from a suspected “Skinwalker” “came from a raccoon.”