The property known as Skinwalker Ranch sits in the Uinta Basin of northeastern Utah, a region the Ute people have long associated with spiritual danger. In Ute oral tradition, the Uinta Basin is traversed by the 'path of the skinwalker' — a concept related to but distinct from the Navajo yee naaldlooshii (skinwalker), a witch who can take animal form. The Ute traditions describe malevolent shape-shifting beings associated with specific landscapes and routes. The basin was considered a place where such entities were active.

The modern mythology of the ranch began in the 1990s, when the Sherman family (who owned the property from 1994 to 1996) reported a cascade of anomalous events: cattle mutilations, luminous objects in the sky, large wolf-like creatures impervious to bullets, and poltergeist-like phenomena in their home. The story was picked up by journalist George Knapp and later investigated by Robert Bigelow's National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS), which purchased the property in 1996.

The collision of Indigenous cosmology with UFO culture is the most interesting aspect of the Skinwalker Ranch phenomenon. The Ute traditions about the basin predate any Euro-American settlement by centuries. The modern paranormal reports map onto — but do not replicate — these traditions. Whether this represents a landscape that genuinely produces anomalous experiences, a cultural template that shapes perception, or simple mythmaking, the layering of Indigenous and modern narratives at a single location is remarkable.