Chad Ollinger, son of ranch owner, Duane Ollinger, has been a prominent participant and character on the Discovery Channel show, "Mystery at Blind Frog Ranch."
Anyone who watches the shows witnessed Chad's adrenalin-seeking behaviors. He could dive. He could fly. He was up and willing to go for it. His enthusiasm, dedication, and bravado added a zest to the excitement of treasure hunting.
Last year, the day after Christmas, guards in the evening were checking on the cells when they noted Chad's cellmate was on the floor. They rushed in to check on him. Chad was acting oddly detached. They realized that with them locked in the cell, a dead body that looks beaten up had only one guilty party.
Chad was fast living and broke some laws, didn't show up at hearings, and ended up in jail. He was about to be released in a few weeks when this crazy event occurred.
It was determined that Chad was not mentally competent to go to trial and so he was moved on to a mental facility that could deal with what sounded like dissociative psychosis of some kind. He seemed to think he had some kind of supernatural powers that allowed him to see into souls and he ascertained his cellmate was an evil deviant pervert. He went into a vengeful rage and apparently killed the man.
In the video above, Carl says that Chad thought he was a skinwalker. Could the property, the gases he's been exposed to, the intensity of the search, have caused him a mental breakdown?
What does this mean for "Mystery at Blind Frog Ranch?" Well, the new season begins again on the 27th of this month on Discovery Channel. Josh, the treasure hunter, is going to be joined by this father who taught him treasure hunting. This father/son duo will fill in the gaps.
I hope James Keenan is on board too because he was a great addition to the team!
As always, I will be giving synopses and hypotheses here on the blog throughout the season.
Update August 2026: Duane Ollinger has passed on. His best friend, Charlie, who heads security at the ranch has rejoined the newly formed team after the ranch being locked down for a year. Charlie faced some serious health setbacks like Duane and they had to ponder if the ranch had caused the issues among them. When Charlie brought a shaman onto the ranch, there were suggestions of the need to ask permission when probing the land there, and not disturbing the Native history.
I often ponder if the locations have odd qualities that drew a very ancient pre-culture of the Americas to mine and settle, build mounds, and such. The Amerindians, came upon this older culture and found the sites to be of some either powerful energy or the sites of the gods. Today, a third people of the modern world have discovered either the mining potential or are drawn to the science of the high strangeness.
When dealing with very ancient energy, it's hard to tell if that draws spiritual practices or if those are launched in areas believed to have been visited by gods.
Like Skinwalker Ranch, we know ill effects can happen when exposed to gases and irradiation. By his very digging and climbing and diving deep into the earth, did Chad come upon personality-alerting elements or was he living a wild life that was going to lead to jail? But, would that make a man who seemed otherwise an adrenalin jockey, but not an insane personality suddenly kill someone in a moment of what sounds like a dissociative schism?
Well, what if it has more ot do with the physicality and personality of the affected? Charlie and Duane, in their latter years, might succumb to illness because of the exposure enhancing the attrition of aging. But, Chad? Young, strong, and vital, as well as perhaps a bit arrogant, it could enhance that. You know how they say alcohol is a personality enhancer? What about this particular land's energy? Might it boost the host's condition?
It is between the court, the mental health experts, and Chad to decide what happened to him, but earlier behavior of pushing physical limits, breaking the law, and ignoring the consequences, might have been harbingers of something building up within him. By incarcerating him, there was nowhere for that energy to go, but into fighting his cellmate. As none of us will know what happened inside Chad to lead to these behaviors, it would appear that he is getting mental help assistance to be competent to go to trial in a murder that he surely committed (only one in the cell with the dead man and admitting he beat him). How will they handle this? As a kind of second degree or manslaughter situation?
Either way, we may never be able to prove if if the Blind Frog Ranch conditions played in any part in his mental demise.