The white ring¶
The white ring is a luminous ring with a faint purple glow, first caught on Robert Bigelow's sky camera over the Sherman Ranch during the night event, and seen again in the finale as a burning circle about a kilometer across.
| Type | Anomalous phenomenon |
| Aliases | Black Sun ring; ranch levitation ring; the ring |
| Location | The sky over the Sherman Ranch |
| Cause | Never explained |
| First appearance | Walkers 05 |
The footage¶
After the night event, Bigelow shows the party a frozen frame from his sky camera and asks about the Black Sun, its pagan roots and its appropriation by the Nazis, and quotes Revelation 6:12. Dante (as Kurt) remarks that the image, though bright, looks lumpy and odd. Much of Bigelow's equipment broke during the event, and the thermal camera whited out (Walkers 05).
The party then watches the footage in motion: a very bright white ring surrounded by a slightly purple glow, oscillating and vibrating in the sky. Bigelow calls it one of the most clear-cut events they have had, part of an escalation dating back a few weeks, and says they "may be on the verge of making contact." He agrees to set up a big ring of cameras around the party's house (Walkers 05). The recording is covered under Bigelow's recordings.
The finale¶
In Walkers 09, the convoy of Guardsmen and agents nears the ranch and sees what looks like a cloud blocking the sun. It turns out to be the ranch farmhouse floating in the sky, surrounded by a loose halo of barbed wire, metal roof panels and probably some horseshoes. Nothing is left on the horizon but the little wooden barn, which has no major metal components. Andre tells the players to stay well away from the ranch property (Walkers 09).
As the sun sets, a faint violet glow grows over the ranch. Near the community center the farmhouse vanishes in a vapor cone, launched toward Roosevelt, and the glow snaps into a burning white ring floating over the ranch, which Andre says is about a kilometer across. The party recognizes it as the image from the security footage taken when Andrew Howard was levitated. Andre compares the change to the field in a plasma ball, which snaps from an amorphous glow into a coherent shape. Invisible waves then rock the Humvees and armored vehicles, everyone gets headaches, time skips a second or two ahead, people freeze mid-sentence, and the armored killdozer begins to levitate intermittently (Walkers 09). The major halts the convoy and orders the soldiers to proceed on foot with the heavy equipment they can easily carry (Walkers 09).
The ring is not explained. Its relationship to the portal beneath the community center, if any, is never stated. The ring belongs with the other unexplained events collected under the Sherman Ranch phenomenon.