Review of The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch S01E02; Plus: Did the Akhbar al-zaman Predict Coronavirus?4/9/2020
The briefcase actually contained a magnet to reproduce a technical glitch one of the other cast members had while taking photos with his smartphone. Everyone on the ranch is now afraid of evil magnetism and thinks there is some secret super-magnet under the ranch. It is deeply bizarre that Taylor, who claims to believe space aliens built cities on the moon and UFOs are coming to Earth through vortices, is the voice of reason and tells the ranch team that they have no evidence of any danger. The remainder of the episode was a long boring slog watching the all-male cast take measurements and wander around the arid landscape. It so closely apes the Oak Island format that you already know before they finish that nothing conclusive will occur. Tom Winterton, who alleged that digging a hole years ago gave him an unexplained head injury, claimed in this episode that merely visiting the ranch’s mesa gave him a headache, so they rushed him to the hospital. They call it an “injury” despite describing it as a headache.
Isn’t it amazing that despite the danger, the production crew for Secret of Skinwalker Ranch happily films the circus, and that they managed to escape the supernatural bombardment unscathed? Fugal claims that the only way to avoid injury is to “approach the ranch” with “humility” and “respect.” I, however, am amazed that even if there were radiation causing negative health effects, the people involved are imagining a malevolent sentience to it—a wildly unsupportable claim. So it seems that despite aping the Oak Island format and style, in terms of content the Secret of Skinwalker Ranch is going to be less Curse of Oak Island: Desert Edition than Ghost Hunters in Slow Motion. Unless there is something of note in future episodes, this will conclude my interest in the saga of dead cows and head bumps. Seriously, space poltergeists: Up your game. You barely hold a candle to regular poltergeists. At least the teen girls that faked classic poltergeists had a little more style and flair. Speaking of shitty cable shows, I should also mention that Discovery Communications has begun broadcasting a new series of Forbidden History. They promoted the fringe conspiracy series from its former U.S. home on the American Heroes Channel to the Science Channel, where it now airs on Sunday nights to 284,000 viewers—one of the rock-bottom lowest-rated pseudo-history shows on TV. However, the Science Channel is no longer part of my cable package, this is mercifully beyond even my panopticon, and thanks to coronavirus isolation, I can’t go to a friend’s house to watch it there, either. Sadly, the show will have to take its miniscule audience and vanish into the night, unwatched and unnoticed. Finally, I want to highlight a fake history claim currently circulating in the Middle East and South Asia in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. A series of Arabic-language social media posts and memes on WhatsApp and elsewhere allege that the medieval Akhbar al-zaman predicted the outbreak of coronavirus. According to the Arabic text, prophecy researchers discovered references to the numbers 20 + 20, a spreading disease, the prohibition of pilgrims, the quieting of all noise, the invasion of locusts, and the death of the king of the Romans. This, the conspiracy theory claims, refers to the year 2020, when coronavirus would shut down the hajj, prevent social gatherings, leave the fields fallow, and see Donald Trump die from coronavirus. The author of the conspiracy theory alleges that the book further adds some anti-Semitic bullshit, situates the outbreak in March, and then concludes that the markets will all close and a third of people will die. As most readers are aware, I am especially familiar with the Akhbar al-zaman since I translated the text into English. The book does not contain prophecies of any kind since it is a (pseudo-) history book covering history from the creation to Moses. The supposed prophecies do not appear in the text. Locusts are only mentioned, for example, in discussing the plagues of Egypt. No Roman king’s death is discussed, and “Roman” meant “Byzantine” in the book anyway. Similarly, the other claims do not appear in the book. It would be exceptionally strange for a book written in Arabic by Muslims in the Middle Ages to encode a Christian year, following a Gregorian calendar that wouldn’t be invented for a few hundred more years. It is possible that the posting meant the other Akhbar al-zaman, but that book—a massive encyclopedia of world history—was lost in Middle Ages. At any rate, the hoaxer attributed the false prophecy to Ibrahim bin Saluki (or Saluqiyya), an author unknown to medieval history. People existed with the al-Saluki name, and I assume that statistically at least one was named Ibrahim, but no copy of the Akhbar al-zaman, nor any literary reference to a book that that name, attributes any such book to a bin Saluki. Similarly, no such references identify any bin Saluki as the author of a book of history or prophecy. The lost Akhbar al-zaman was the work of al-Masudi, and the extant one is an anonymous book often falsely attributed to al-Masudi and sometimes identified as the work of Ibrahim ibn Wasif Shah (a.k.a. al-Wasifi). The false bin Saluki’s biography is an interesting mashup of various authors of the real Akhbar al-zaman. According to a Saudi summary of the Arabic claims, bin Saluki was born in Persia, trained in Mesopotamia under the Abbasids and died in 1071 CE (463 AH). He wrote a 30-volume history of the world, of which only a one volume survives. The last part is easiest to trace back. It refers to al-Masudi’s Akhbar al-zaman, which ran (surprise!) 30 volumes, of which one volume supposedly remains in Vienna, though its authenticity is unproven. The remaining details are random medieval tropes. Bin Saluki’s peregrinations are pretty close to those of the famed astrologer-historian Abu Ma’shar but also many other leading lights of the medieval Arab world. Bin Saluki’s supposed death in 1071 about averages out the dates of various candidates for the Akhbar al-zaman’s authorship. Al-Mas’udi died in 956 CE, for example, and ibn Wasif Shah (if he existed) probably died sometime after 1200 CE.
40 Comments
Nick Danger
4/9/2020 08:36:35 am
Cliffhanger - reminds me of the old Lost in Space series, where an episode would end with an avalanche falling towards our heroes!
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Kent
4/9/2020 03:08:00 pm
Lost In Space didn't do that.
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Nick Danger
4/10/2020 10:03:40 am
I respectfully disagree.
Joe Scales
4/10/2020 11:29:00 am
Yeah, only the first season (the one in black & white) had the cliffhangers in the early episodes.
Joe Scales
4/10/2020 02:44:43 pm
Thinking more on it though... I think they'd also add a tag to the end of some episodes, unrelated to what had happened during the episode, that would lead into the next one. Doubt it was "every episode"... but then again, when they cut and edited for more commercials, those end tags could have been cut.
Machala
4/9/2020 11:06:06 am
With everyone trapped inside, I suggest an alternative to watching all the crap put out by History channel. Switch to Comedy Central and enjoy the episodes of "Drunk History" - hilariously written and produced by Derek Waters and Jeremy Konner.
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Bill
4/9/2020 11:54:31 am
While I've been following your blog for years, and post now and then, and agree 100% on your analysis of Ancient Aliens and now the Skinwalker show, I disagree with your put down of Curse of Oak Island. I've seen every episode of all 3 shows. If you ignore the odd tangent on OI, I find that it is essentially a documentary, particularly the last few seasons, trying to balance (sometimes a bit lopsided) "entertainment" and "reality" in what is actually happening on the island. Let's face it, the reality of the situation is it takes time to get permits, dig holes etc. While they "hope" they may find "something" they certainly don't go 100% off the rails like the other shows. Personally, I enjoy it and am disappointed that the efforts this year will likely be on hold due to the pandemic.
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Doc Rock
4/9/2020 01:56:50 pm
I think that the Oak Island series has been running for six or seven years now. That's a hell of a lot of time to get permits and dig a lot and find nothing. It isn't really a documentary since a documentary of people digging for years and finding nothing would be pretty boring. The constant hyping of clues, if not outright fabrication of clues and drama take this show beyond the realm of documentary. Unless one is using This is Spinal Tap as their model for what a documentary should be, it ain't no documentary.
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Bill
4/9/2020 03:06:41 pm
Have you actually watched it recently though? All the work in Smith's Cove for example. They are using proper scientists, archaeologists, etc. Sure, there is some crap thrown in once in a while, but the last few seasons have been significantly better than the first few.
Jim
4/9/2020 06:08:40 pm
Bill, I can't claim to have watched many episodes lately, but from what I have seen they may use science, but they try to bend the science to fit their preconceived conclusions.
Bill
4/9/2020 08:48:16 pm
Jim,
max
4/9/2020 09:41:53 pm
Wasn’t Oak Island the one where they discovered a ‘Roman sword’, that was obviously a modern tourist replica?
Doc Rock
4/9/2020 10:25:04 pm
Bill,
Joe Scales
4/10/2020 11:37:19 am
"While I won't argue that they tend to jump to preconceived conclusions, they do respect the science, at least to a point."
Joe Scales
4/10/2020 11:41:37 am
"Have you actually watched it recently though? All the work in Smith's Cove for example. They are using proper scientists, archaeologists, etc. "
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Jim
4/9/2020 12:10:56 pm
Anybody get the impression that mysterious ailments and injuries are going to be a common theme ?
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Kent
4/9/2020 03:03:27 pm
How to say this? You didn't "translated the text" you translated a (possibly poor, possibly incomplete) translation because you don't Arabic. No shame in that, it's a whole different pot and kettle of fish. I've retranslated a book where the previous translators omitted the first sentence, which was intended as a theme for the entire book.
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E.P. Grondine
4/10/2020 10:18:40 am
Kent -
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Kent
4/10/2020 12:43:52 pm
Oh Jesus Christ on a bicycle. Jason probably knows where Arabic is, but like most Americans probably doesn't know the alphabet. No disrespect.
Knute Atkinson
4/9/2020 04:11:44 pm
Because you don’t understand the meaning of the word “theme” as it relates to literature, your entire comment is worthless.
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Joseph Craven
4/9/2020 08:16:10 pm
I feel like if a medieval Arab author had predicted a global outbreak of disease it'd still be a huge stretch to assume he was talking about one specific one centuries in the future, rather than just taking a safe bet that a plague's going to happen based on his own recent memory and experiences.
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Michael Redmond
4/10/2020 12:34:25 am
Travis Taylor used the word "experiment," like, 20 times in reference to data collection, i.e., taking readings. Science, it's amazing.
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Nick Danger
4/10/2020 10:10:34 am
I'm referring to the original series - I have not seen the new one.
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Kent
4/10/2020 12:47:04 pm
I'm gonna do damage control too late here and say I was wrong.
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Joe Scales
4/10/2020 02:51:09 pm
Hey man, I just dig the whole Lost in Space thing. I recall the first season actually being quite frightening for young kids. Then it went all camp and became the Dr. Smith, Will and the Robot Show.
Kent
4/10/2020 05:29:12 pm
As a kid I was a big fan. Angela Cartwright and Marta Kristen gave me notions. It was always camp, camp was queen in the 60s. Billy Mumy was in Bless the Beasts and the Children and played in a band with the late Miguel Ferrer.
Nick Danger
4/10/2020 02:38:41 pm
I started to doubt myself, and had to look it up. :)
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Tony C
4/10/2020 10:15:52 pm
Do you remember in the Twilight Zone? The episode"Its a good Life":was good!
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Joe Scales
4/11/2020 09:16:06 am
Klugman had the hat trick as well. He was also in two of my favorites. The suicidal trumpeter and the up and coming pool shark.
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Tony C
4/11/2020 11:25:46 am
Yes! Klugman in the Suicidal Trumpeter was good. The Twilight Zone and later Night Gallery were simple, but memorable as a kid.
Kent
4/11/2020 03:15:40 pm
Remember when Bill Bixby and Ellie Mae Clampett burned the cat on the barbecue because the Druid statue said so on Night Gallery?
Kent
4/12/2020 03:58:03 am
Serling, who actually did a combat jump in the Pacific Theater, did a brilliant bit of antiwar work in "In Praise of Pip". Klugman of course was the straw that stirred the drink.
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Tony C
4/12/2020 11:14:23 am
The Beverly Hillbillies was another good show. Ellie Mae was easy on the eyes. I liked the episode when Jethro and Jed were shooting the wings off the flies at the front gate (100 yards or more) with a basic rifle.
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Kent
4/12/2020 01:19:01 pm
The joke in the BH was that the simple hicks were out-performing everyone. "Well yeah, this is how we shoot back home" and Jethro could eat an entire family in the course of one day. And Ellie Mae was a goddess ... with critters.
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Ralphie
4/14/2020 09:52:24 am
Just to be accurate, the man in question said that after digging, at skinwalker ranch, he developed an unaccountable swelling on the back of his head. This can actually be considered an injury, if both the connotation and denotation of the word “injury” are considered.
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Tony C
4/14/2020 11:39:42 am
Last Summer and early Fall, my family were back in Italy visiting relatives in Pietravairano, Baia Latina, and Caserta Italy. A neighbor of a relative was the President of the Leonardo Da Vinci Museum in Rome, Florence, St Petersburgh Russia, and others (Modesto Veccia), worked with Dan Brown on his books about the Templars. He also read the originals and recreated the writings of Da Vinci into form (Dr. of Engineering). He informed that Dan Brown's WIFE was the one doing all the research, not Dan. My sons and I went crawling through Templar Castles right in the villages but not even visited. No tourist till we hit Rome was the best part:).
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Jim
4/14/2020 01:10:11 pm
What do you mean by "templar families"?
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Kent
4/15/2020 08:44:33 pm
The Templars were renowned for banging and boning, traveling thousands of miles to get it on. And of course not all Templars were monks or knights, maybe it's very iffy-diffy depending on what you're trying to sell.
Rudy
4/22/2020 11:23:58 am
This entire saga reminds me of The Colour Out of Space, especially that bit with the "malevolent sentience". Maybe in a few episodes everything will start glowing in the dark :D
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AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. Newsletters
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