Phenomecon

PhenomeCon is a paranormal conference held each September in Vernal, a small city in the Uintah Basin of Utah, about three hours east of Salt Lake City. Uintah County's travel and tourism office organizes and runs it at the county-owned Uintah Conference Center, and the county holds the trademark on the name. Its programming mixes UFOs and UAP with Bigfoot, ghosts and cattle mutilations, and much of its draw comes from the nearby Skinwalker Ranch, whose researchers and television personalities appear regularly on its stage. The 2026 edition ran from September 9 to 12.

The conference has been both a tourism success and a point of local controversy. A 2023 FOX 13 investigation found that it was financed by the county's hotel and motel room tax and that ticket sales had not covered costs, leaving a loss of about $24,000 over its first two years before staff time and the free venue were counted. County tourism director Lesha Coltharp said the 2022 conference drew about 1,000 people from more than a dozen states and a few foreign countries, and estimated that it generated $1 million for local businesses; in a 2024 interview with ABC4 she said it "brings in millions of dollars to our community in rural Utah." Erica Lukes of Expanding Frontiers Research, which first reported the county's financial ties to the event, told FOX 13 that the conference was "promoting information that isn't based in fact." Coltharp replied that the county hires "high-caliber speakers," and Skinwalker Ranch superintendent Thomas Winterton, a member of the planning committee, said, "I don't think anything paranormal can be proven scientifically."

The 2026 program leaned further into the government disclosure debate. Alongside ghost investigators and Bigfoot researchers, the schedule included Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb on searching for extraterrestrial artifacts near Earth; retired Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet on a UAP science advisory council and the legacy of the 1953 Robertson Panel; and a panel on the documentary The Age of Disclosure with director Dan Farah, Jay Stratton, Brett Feddersen, Gallaudet and Travis Taylor, moderated by Micah Hanks. Two panels were devoted to Skinwalker Ranch, former UAP Task Force member Lenval Logan described his path to the task force, and George Knapp and Jeremy Corbell closed the final day.

The most widely discussed talk was Jay Stratton's September 11 lecture, "The Road to Disclosure," given a month before the publication of his memoir, Out of the Shadows. Only partial audio circulated afterward, mainly through transcriptions by UFO commentators. According to those accounts, Stratton said the Pentagon's prepublication reviewers "took nothing out that was UAP-related," explaining that he had written the security classification guide and knew what was classified. He traced his government UAP work to 2005 and said, "None of the people you see on podcasts, the news, etc., had responsibility for conducting the USG's UAP investigations. I did." Podcaster Pavel Ibarra Meda, who heard the recording, reported that Farah announced at the conference that he was developing a series based on the book. Corbell later said Stratton had spoken of "active FBI investigations at two separate locations that are similar to Skinwalker Ranch."

Those statements reached the wider UAP community secondhand, through partial audio and later retellings. They also show what PhenomeCon has become: a county-funded tourism event built around Skinwalker Ranch that, by 2026, also served as a venue where a former task force director and the makers of a prominent disclosure documentary previewed work they were preparing to release.