The big house¶
The big house is the main house and equipment barn of Sherman Ranch, rented by the billionaire Robert Bigelow as the base of his research operation: a place of camera monitors, staff quarters, a roof where an eye appears, and a porch cooler that ends up holding a dead coyote.
| Type | Location (house and barn) |
| Aliases | Bigelow's house; big house and barn; the barn |
| Region | Sherman Ranch, near Ballard, Utah |
| Holder | Robert Bigelow (tenant); the ranch belongs to Alberta Wilmarth |
| First appearance | Walkers 02 |
Description¶
Alberta rents the big house to Bigelow, so she offers the task force the smaller guest double-wide instead (Walkers 02). Bigelow's rules, relayed by Walt Murphy, are that the big house and the barn beside it are off-limits (Walkers 02). The bedroom windows of the double-wide face it.
Inside, a bank of TVs shows the ranch cameras, though only one camera on the big house can even partly see the guest house, and a woman on the staff can cue the tapes (Walkers 04). Staff sleep upstairs, and VHS tapes play on monitor screens (Walkers 05). The porch has a beer cooler (Walkers 07). The barn holds banks of instruments for the research and has a loose chain on its door (Walkers 04).
Notable places within¶
- The porch. Bigelow receives the team here, serving sweet tea and buttered bread while a blonde security guard (Ponytail Lady) asks them to leave weapons at the door (Walkers 02). Walt gives out brownies and cold soup here (Walkers 03).
- The camera room. The team watches footage here of the vanished rental car and of the night event (Walkers 04, Walkers 05).
- The roof. On the evening before the night event, while the team is out in the yard, a single eye watches from the roof of the house; as they back away, at about fifty feet, the goose drops down from the roof (Walkers 05).
- The barn. Two stoned teenagers hide behind the equipment (Walkers 04); it is later emptied of recordings (Walkers 07).
- The big cabinet. Bigelow's armoury of SPAS-12 shotguns and M16 rifles (Walkers 07).
History of events there¶
Instruments and data. Bigelow's team records electromagnetic, electrostatic, radio, thermal and acoustic data on large tape reels; he reports that all the anomalies are confined to the ranch and about half a mile around (Walkers 02). See Bigelow's recordings.
The cameras. Kurt asks to compare the records with the substation "pop" and the shift of the car; a curt doorman turns him away (Walkers 04). The team later gets the tape: a patch of slightly different gray seems to be where the car was, and the EM meters spike at the times of the pop and the car shift, though the data are noisy. The team parks Betsy in front of the cameras (Walkers 04) and, in Walkers 05, chains it to four posts there.
The night event. After the night event, Bigelow shows the party a frozen sky-camera frame and asks about the Black Sun; the video shows a bright white ring (see The white ring and Black Sun). He agrees to ring the guest house with cameras and arranges a dentist in Roosevelt (Walkers 05).
The break-in. After the naked intruder's attack on the guest house, Bigelow says someone broke in and stole all his hard drives, tapes and recordings, and three of his employees. The barn's contents are gone too, and whoever it was had keys to everything. He declares "protocol blue", unlocks the big cabinet, and sets a ground-floor defensive perimeter. The team finds a beer cooler on the porch and uses it, weighted with bricks, to store the dead coyote from the gym. At the close of the episode the team's plan is to drive out at sunrise with radios and summon the National Guard (Walkers 07).
The morning after. In Walkers 08 one of Bigelow's enforcers makes pancakes in the kitchen at about 9 a.m., while his people carry SPAS-12s and M16s and the phones are dead. The episode does not name the building, but later in the episode Andre suggests going "back to the ranch" for the rest of Bigelow's security force. The later fate of the ranch is told at Sherman Ranch.
Inhabitants¶
Robert Bigelow and his research staff and security, including the blonde guard; the ranch hand Walt Murphy (nicknamed "Coyote"); and, for a time, the task force as backup (Walkers 07).