SKINWALKER RANCH .

In his book Reading the Enemy's Mind, remote viewer Paul Smith relates that in 1992 Robert Bigelow put the wheels in motion for a radio show on the paranormal, called Area 2000, hosted by Art Bell and featuring reports from George Knapp (whom Bigelow has had a long association with - Knapp was given an exclusive to the Skinwalker Ranch story, and also has covered the Bigelow space efforts) and Linda Moulton Howe. While Bigelow later withdrew sponsorship of the show, Art Bell continued with it and it later evolved into the massively popular Coast to Coast AM.
Over the past decade, Robert Bigelow has continued his backing of paranormal research. He created the National Institute of Discovery Science (NIDS) in 1995 to investigate border phenomena, stocking the advisory board with some of the leading lights in the field such as Jacques Vallee, Hal Puthoff, Melvin Morse and Edgar Mitchell. Employees of the organization were generally PhD scientists, as well as some former FBI field investigators and law-enforcement professionals. The NIDS website provides news and investigations into such wide-ranging topics as 'Black Triangle' sightings, cattle mutilations, consciousness studies and crop circles. NIDS was put into 'in-active' status in 2004 due to a lack of worthwhile cases to investigate.
In March 2009 Bigelow concluded a deal with the Mutual UFO Network to train a special rapid response team of Field Investigators able to be deployed within 24 hours to the scene of a major 'physical trace' UFO event (Category 2 or 3 in the classification system devised by researcher Jacques Vallee).
Bigelow - through NIDS - also bought the 'Skinwalker Ranch' in Utah where residents had reported UFO sightings, cattle mutilations and paranormal experiences. After the ranch shot to national news prominence, he flew to Utah and met with the owners, offering to buy the ranch for about $200,000. He staffed it with a full-time veterinarian and two scientists to monitor the strange activity (the account can be found in Hunt for the Skinwalker). It is believed that he still owns the ranch.
He says his interest in UFOs was spawned...
...when I was probably around 8 or 9. I began to hear the stories about members of my family that had had a couple of very good sightings, and one was a close encounter. They didn't see actually living creatures. What they saw was an object that they thought was an airplane on fire at first. They stopped their car; it was nighttime and the object was coming right for them. And it grew bigger and bigger in a very short time, a matter of maybe seconds, until it filled up the windshield. Then they realized it wasn't an airplane on fire; they didn't know what it was. Their car was stopped on the side of the road in a remote location at night and they thought they were dead -- until, at the last second before impact, it made a right-angle turn and zipped out of sight. And I remember how shook up they were. Even in telling me years later, they had a very serious look on their face.
Bigelow also funded the UNLV Bigelow Chair of Consciousness Studies at the University of Nevada, which is dedicated to the "rational investigation of the mysteries of human awareness, including the possibility of the persistence of consciousness after death." He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Rhine Research Center (formerly, The Foundation for the Study of the Nature of Man), and is an associate member of the Society for Scientific Exploration.