According to the Diné Navajo people, Skinwalkers are shapeshifting witches who conduct all sorts of terrible things. These beings can make people sick and commit murders. They are graverobbers and necrophiliacs. They are greedy and evil entities who must kill a sibling or other relative to be initiated as a Skinwalker. They supposedly can turn into were-animals and can travel in supernatural ways.
Anthropologist David Zimmerman of the Navajo Nation Historic Preservation Department explains:
"Skinwalkers are folks that possess knowledge of medicine, medicine both practical (heal the sick) and spiritual (maintain harmony), and they are both wrapped together in ways that are nearly impossible to untangle."
These medicine men train over many years to become full-fledged practitioners in the mystical rituals of the Diné Navajo people. The medicine men have shown themselves to be effective in treating a range of ailments according to the U.S. Public Health Service. But, there is also a dark side. Witches follow some of the same training and obtain similar knowledge as their more benevolent colleagues, but they supplement both with their pursuit of the dark arts, or black magic. By Diné Navajo law, a known witch has forfeited its status as a human and can be killed at will. The assumption is that a witch, by definition, is evil.
The cautious Diné Navajo will not speak openly about Skinwalkers, especially with strangers, because to do so might invite the attention of an evil witch. After all, a stranger who asks questions about Skinwalkers just might be one himself, looking for his next victim.
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"In February 2006 at 9:15 PM at a small reservation outside of Albuquerque, a young boy was sent out to get a juice bottle from a parked car and while his uncle lay on the couch he heard the boy screaming. His uncle got up to see the boy’s father coming in with the boy holding his hand. The boy appeared terrified and was shaking. His grandmother talked to him and asked him what was wrong. He then said that a “thing” had watched him from the fence line and then came after him. He said it was about 4ft tall and had red glowing eyes, gray hairy feet, long claws, and a snout like that of a dog. Human-like footprints with “claws” were found near the window."
NOTE: the encounter was reported to a local newspaper but never published. A reservation police officer stated to an investigative reporter that several 'skinwalker' sighting reports had been made within 2 months.
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"I try to read about skinwalkers and/or Navajo witches whenever I hear of any articles or books about them. When I was a little girl traveling with my family on vacation, we came across something strange that had to have been a skinwalker or Navajo witch. It was 1967 or 1968 and we were driving from California to Arkansas to visit family. On the way to Arkansas, we were on Route 66 outside of Albuquerque, NM and we had stopped at a rest area so my Dad could sleep. It doesn't happen often now, but back then a lot of people used to stop and sleep in the rest areas.
It was the middle of the night and something startled my father awake. He woke up and was extremely scared and nervous. He was trying to figure out why he woke up and why he felt scared when he saw a man walking across the desert. He said that he almost couldn't take his eyes off the guy because, even though the man was kind of far out there, something was wrong. The man was walking towards the rest area from out in the desert, as he got closer, my father saw what was different about him. The man had a fur skin thrown across his shoulders and as he walked his feet were not touching the ground. He passed right beside our car and looked my Dad in the eye. My Dad said that all of the hair on his body stood up. He immediately started our car and drove away as fast as he could.
It was later that we found out that some crazy guy came into the same rest area, the very same night that we were there, and shot a bunch of people. From what I was told, some of the people were killed. I was a little girl 3 or 4 years old, I was asleep when it all happened, but we never stopped in NM after that. Every year we went to Arkansas to visit family and we never stopped in NM again, we always drove straight through." Nina
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"I live close to the reservation just outside Mesa, Arizona. I have a couple of Native friends who I just recently went camping with around 20 miles outside the valley to a place they call Three Poles. This place is considered holy land in their eyes and is close to a river. There are numerous stories I know about this place, such as the flute player you can hear at night or the boulder-sized splashes you hear in the river. But the most notable are the stories of the skinwalkers.
We arrived at the camping site around 9 p.m. It was already dark, so we started to unpack and made a fire. Once that was done, my Native buddies put up the barriers and puffed the smoke of tobacco upon us as a personal barrier. They told me never to go anywhere alone and that around 3 a.m. is when the spirits are the most active. Around 2 a.m. the beating of a drum became very clear; this is a sign of the skinwalker, they told me. At around 3 a.m., the smell of wet dogs became apparent. This is the sign of either two things: Hoofy, an extremely evil spirit; or the skinwalkers.
The fire grew small and we could see the shadows of animals. We all decided to move to another site in the morning. As the first light dawned, we packed. I sat in the back of his truck to hold down the stuff. As we left, I saw a rottweiler walking on its hind legs straight to the middle of our camp. It was easily 5 feet tall and had bright orange eyes. I freaked out and screamed as it was running at us, still standing up. It disappeared into a bush after we turned the corner.
Later on at our other camp, an old man with his face covered up by hair visited us and acted very strangely. We ran out of drinks, so a friend and I decided to head out on foot (no car; a friend had to take it home). We saw a car. As it approached, it slowed down to a halt and the same man asked if we wanted a ride. We said no because by this time my friends had told me the man was a skinwalker. He grabbed my arm and pulled me by his car and looked straight at me. As my friend ran up to grab me, the man took off in his car.
Once we got back, I relaxed. It was around dawn when just behind me the man appeared about 10 feet away and asked if I could help him with something back at his camp. As he did, two trucks came around the corner to head further into the grounds. He watched them as they passed and then all of a sudden he bolted after them. I was astonished to see this 60-year-old man chasing down a car. My native friends put up a salt barrier. I heard sounds all night, but never saw anything after that." LD
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"As a teenager, I would visit my grandma at her home on the Navajo rez for several weeks every summer. I loved to spend time with her, eat her delicious fried bread, and hear her tell us stories. Every so often my grandma would hire a worker (the harmless town drunk) to do odd jobs around her house and property. One evening right before the sun went down, I was asked by my grandma to take him home, which was about four miles out of the valley where she lived. I was more than happy to, seeing that I was only 14 years old and was asked to drive a truck! Mind you on the rez, nobody cares that you're only 14 years old and driving around. Hell, there's hardly anybody around to see you anyway! So my 9-year-old brother jumped in the truck cab with me while this "worker" and my dog shared the tailgate of the truck and we were off. After I dropped the worker off at the shack that he and his brothers called a house, we headed back down the road to grandma's. As I mentioned before, it was evening and the sky was a deep red as the sun began to set behind us. We were leaving a nice dust trail from the dirt road and the radio was playing music from the only radio station that could be picked up from the nearest town of Holbrook, Arizona.
There was nothing unusual, nothing weird. It was at this time that my eye caught the movement of something in the bushes a little up the road to the right of us. I remember slowing down thinking that it was one of the many free-roaming sheep in the area that would dart out in front of the truck. As I passed where I thought I saw it, I sped up thinking nothing else of it. Then out of nowhere I just felt this dark feeling of fear and dread. I had no idea why I was feeling this way but I definitely felt that something was wrong.
As I play this memory back in my mind, there are only a few clear memories that I have of that evening. I clearly remember looking in my rearview mirror and seeing the dark silhouette of something very tall and very skinny that seemed to be covered with some kind of hair or fur running behind the truck after us! Whatever it was, it wasn't a normal human or human at all. I remember hearing my brother crying and my dog barking ferociously at whatever was chasing us. I remember speeding very fast and shaking violently as the truck bounced on the washboard dirt road. I distinctly remember that this thing was only getting closer as my brother cried "It's coming up on your side!" I remember being as scared as hell and thinking that I didn't want to die. At the moment I thought would be our last. I remember speeding around a bend in the road and seeing a car coming towards us in the opposite direction. At that moment I felt instant relief and felt that whatever was following us was gone.
Shaken up but alive, we made it to grandma's house wondering what the hell had just happened. We ran inside not looking back, hoping that whatever was chasing us had not followed us home. As we told my grandma about our experience she didn't seem too surprised, which surprised us. She continued by repeating stories that we had already heard at one point or another about black magic, witches, and something that the Navajos call Yee Nadlooshii or Skinwalkers. Needless to say, I didn't even want to look out any of the windows at all the rest of that night. As a matter of fact, I never drove on the reservation at night until I was 21 years old.
Without going too deep into explanation, I'll just say that these Skin-walkers are evil men and spirits that use black magic for evil doing. I tell you that as farfetched as it may sound, they are real! I believe that if God and his greatness are real, the devil is equally as real and also has his ways of showing himself.
This may not sound very scary to some readers and that may be due to my lack of writing skills. But what happened that evening really did happen and scared the living crap out of me. I invite anybody to visit this part of Arizona if you have any doubts or want a huge scare. I promise you that you won't be disappointed.
I hope that you enjoyed my story and I look forward to sharing other experiences soon." T
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"I've seen a skinwalker ONCE! I have never seen one since. My older brother, older sister, and I were going home for the weekend. We were coming in from Phoenix. We had to leave pretty late. It usually takes us 5 hours to get home which is in Low Mountain near Pinon, AZ. We drove toward Keams Canyon highway and took a certain dirt road that would take us straight to Low Mountain. Before we reached the dirt road we noticed a very old lady walking on the side of the highway with a cane at 2 o'clock in the morning! She had her scarf around her head, a long black jacket, and wearing a green dress. We did not think anything of it but thought it was weird that she was walking late at night on a highway. The reservation is really dark at night and there is hardly anyone driving on the roads. We eventually turned on the dirt road.
A mile away from the highway we noticed the same old lady walking on the side of the dirt road with her cane. I freaked out! I started crying because we knew that it was the same lady 15 miles back. My brother stepped on the gas and started driving faster. He gave us some medicine to protect us from harm. We eventually got to a highway that took us to Chinle, Low Mountain, or Pinon. We passed the first bridge and we noticed that the old lady was sitting on the highway with her head down waving the cane in the air. Before we could pass her the car just shut down and wouldn't start. The old lady stood up facing the opposite way from us so we wouldn't see her face and walked across the other side of the road. She turned her head to face us and her face was painted all black. She kept walking and eventually disappeared in the distance. My brother turned the ignition and the car started!! It scared the hell outta me!!! I was crying so bad that I never wanted to drive through the road again.
When we got home we told my parents about it. My dad said that there was an old couple that lived between the two highways that did bad medicine on people. He also said that her husband had passed on not long ago and that she walks that road every now and then. They had two kids; one of them passed away at a very young age with an unknown cause of death and the other one drinks and huffs. We ended up driving back the longer way which was taking the highway to the junction road and going toward Ganado. It was very real and very scary. DN
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I received a correspondence from an individual with the moniker 'Coy Cryptid.' He is a resident of the Diné Navajo reservation and this is a reply to an inquiry I made in a previous post. I have not changed anything in the email....completely original:
Well, where to start......? We are not skin walkers, we are "eaters of all" (closest translation I can do to our real name, sorry) We are old, so old that some of us remember this world when it had many moons and the land flowed like water. We are not evil, nor good. We just are. In the way of modern thinking, we are like animals; not fallen from grace, and speak and hear God directly. I don't know if we have souls, because we don't die, just .... this is really hard to explain ..... we don't go dormant, just change the way we live. Right now I am Human. I look, feel, think, and act just like one of you. I will apparently die just like one of you, only to spread out from where my " mortal remains " fall or are eaten, adsorbed... or interred, mingling with the strings of life (another hard one to put into words) that come into contact with me. Until I decide to become one of them (I have sort of decided on one of the squids, we'll see how that works out). In the time between dedicated forms, we walk in our true forms, remembering all the things that we have been. It's hard to describe being many things at once, but we do go back to places we've been because the "memories of love"(?) draw us back. We watch over you as we are directed to do, letting you live your lives according to Law both good and bad as is the will of the Creator. You are right to fear us in our true forms because we do not think as humans do, but a collage of thoughts from many forms at once.
The Creator bid us to stay our feeding on you many many eons ago, but left us with the right to protect ourselves if threatened in any of our forms (careful with that fly swatter or bar of soap). We can grasp your, or any other creature's mind if we choose, and hold them while we eat. In this form, it is a very unpleasant thought and leaves me nauseous just thinking about it. All of us by now (except the ones that left this world early on for a "walk about" or from the great shame) have spent many lifetimes in human form and almost all of them love people deeply. Every creature in this world fears us because you are all survivors who have sensed us in true form. We have to calm you to walk among you even in dedicated forms.
We have traits that can be used to identify us in any of our forms. The closest thing that I can call them is "tells." Mine is that I don't eat feet (yuck how nasty, .....this includes fins, hooves, tips of tentacles, pads, wing feathers, or anything used as contact points for locomotion blahhhhuch). One of my co-cross mates (don't ask, we have 17 separate sexes, talk about a bitch on Friday nights) will not eat anything "purple" as she sees it. Another friend of mine dislikes certain forms of nerve tissue and says it makes him itch. Short of these little peccadilloes we can consume almost anything and derive energy for life from it, from sunshine to radionuclides and everything in between, yummy (I know, I know, "feet" have all that and more too but eeuuuuwwww!!)! I personally have always wanted to taste anti-matter but have never gotten around to going above the cloud tops to taste any. Well, I am rambling on a bit too much, and I have to go to sleep because I have to go to work in the morning, I thought you should know some more about what we are.
With best regards,
Coy Cryptid
The Curse of the Wendigo (The Monstrumologist)
Native American Myths & Legends
Dangerous Spirits: The Windigo in Myth and History
Cryptid Country (Cryptid Zoo)
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