An In Memoriam Card on 'Beyond Skinwalker Ranch' Paid Tribute to Chris, but Who Is She?
The in memoriam was for someone who had appeared on the show.
Published June 11 2025, 10:46 a.m. ET
It's not uncommon for shows of all kinds to pay tribute to someone, and it's also not uncommon for those tributes to be confusing to everyone who is not closely associated with the person being memorialized. During a 2024 episode of Beyond Skinwalker Ranch, the show paid tribute to a woman named Chris.
As viewers catch up with the show or rewatch it, many want to better understand who Chris is and why she received such a touching tribute in the episode. Here's what we know.
Who is the Chris who was memorialized in 'Beyond Skinwalker Ranch'?
Chris is actually a woman who briefly appeared on the show. She is the mother of Nicole Fontanese and was the owner of Rocky Mountain Ranch along with her husband, Greg. The two of them lived there for about 40 years, starting in the mid-1980s, and she was absent from the show's second season because she died between Seasons 1 and 2. Rocky Mountain Ranch is one of the locations the show's crew is investigating for paranormal activity.
Although plenty of viewers were unclear on this at the time, the tribute has since been clarified by Nicole herself, who weighed in on several Facebook comment threads to explain who her mother was.
"She was my mom," Nicole wrote. "She was not in season two as she had passed prior to filming. She is not Katie's mom. Katie was there for a bit prior to my parents buying the place about 40 years ago."
It seems, then, that the show was paying tribute to one of the people who was central to their ongoing investigation, but someone who hadn't been central to the onscreen story. It was likely a touching and meaningful tribute for those who understood it, and now that more people have the context to understand why it was included, they can better understand who Chris was and how she was related to the show.
'Beyond Skinwalker Ranch' is a History channel spin-off.
The name of Beyond Skinwalker Ranch might be slightly confusing to some, in part because the show is a spin-off of The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, a series that investigated the mysteries around a specific ranch and the paranormal activity that happened there. Beyond Skinwalker Ranch is, by contrast, a show that investigates other mysterious locations like Skinwalker Ranch that are scattered across the country.
Rocky Mountain Ranch is one such location where bizarre stories have been told in the past, and as such, Chris was part of the show's overall story. If you're a regular fan of the show, you might remember the location without remembering exactly who she was, but there's a reason the show took the time to pay tribute to her.
And, thanks to that tribute, more people know who she is than would otherwise. That's part of the point of these types of tributes, and one of the reasons that so many shows like Beyond Skinwalker Ranch do them.