From the unexplained to the mundane, come join us on a journey to the fringe.
Hello and welcome to Journey to the Fringe, the ingrown hair of a well-kept beard of normalcy.
We are your hosts, some of whom may be dealing with facial hair issues, Taylor and Chelsea.
And today Chelsea has selected to not tell me what we will be talking about.
So I just have to at this point just turn it over to her because I'm out of words.
That is what I selected.
Words are particularly hard for us sometimes.
Or easy.
I feel like I'm always keeping the topic back from you these days.
But I want to see in normal fashion if you can guess this week's topic.
Here's your hint.
And everyone can play along with us as well.
So long as you haven't read the title properly in this episode.
Exactly.
And maybe I won't give it away in the title.
If you've just like naturally flowed into this episode from another episode and haven't
looked at your phone since.
Yeah, don't look at it.
And boy are you like we have a niche audience.
Okay, this episode is about a type of witch who is not a healer, but rather has the supernatural
ability to turn into, possess or disguise themselves as animals, aka a shapeshifter.
Is it a skinwalker?
Yeah.
Okay.
You heard it from Taylor who had no idea what this episode was about.
That's right.
This week's episode of Journey to the Fringe, we get the immense pleasure of finally talking
about skinwalkers.
The Navajo have some of the most interesting lore surrounding skinwalkers.
Pretty much exclusively because it's their lore.
The Navajo are part of a larger cultural area that also includes the Pueblo people, Apache,
Hopi and Yut and other groups that also have their own versions of the skinwalker.
Skinwalker is exclusive to the Navajo.
Each one of them includes a malevolent witch capable of transforming itself into an animal.
With that being said, I do need to acknowledge first and foremost that I'm not First Nations.
The skinwalker is very much Navajo lore, which is, it's particularly taboo to even talk about
the skinwalker or even say its name, nor do they like talking especially with those who
are outside of the indigenous community.
That being said, this is a paranormal subject that is of particular interest to us and we
want to cover it, so I'm sorry, but I've done my very best with this, as I possibly
could.
I also must disclose at this point that there are going to be some really good words for
pronouncing in this episode.
So let's move on now that I have all that out of the way.
Now I do have a question Chelsea, is it just a really weird coincidence that skinwalker
sounds the way it does in English and seems to, like, I'm assuming that's the native name
for it, correct?
No.
Okay.
And that's literally my next sentence.
Okay.
I'm not sure actually where skinwalker comes from, that word.
So maybe they just gave it a name in English?
I don't know.
That would be just speculation on my part, but they do have a word for it in Navajo.
Okay.
And it's not just a direct translation that comes to skinwalker, okay?
No.
Okay.
I'm about to enlighten you.
Here's my next sentence.
So the word in the native language, the Yinaldushi, which literally means with it he goes on all
fours, is one of several varieties of skinwalker.
Specifically they are a type of antidehini.
I don't actually know how to say that and it is some letters that don't look like they
go together.
So I do apologize.
I hate doing this, but I'm sorry.
That word means practitioners of witchery.
They are people who have received supernatural power by breaking a cultural taboo.
Upon the initiation of the antidehini, a person is said to gain the power to become a Yinaldushi.
How do you spell this?
A with an accent, N, T, a prostrophe.
I think that's J, J, H, N, I, I.
H, oh, okay.
That's not as easy as I thought it would be.
Are you sure you didn't mean Anthony because my search result asked if you spiked it right
Anthony?
No, actually now that I look at it, it is Anthony.
Anthony.
Kidding, kidding.
I mean, we are such good pronounce eaters that I wouldn't surprise me if it was Anthony.
A person is said to gain the power to become a Yinaldushi, which is a skinwalker if I lost
you.
This is done via a song and dance ceremony used to curse instead of heal.
So you see the evilness there.
Although both men and women can become a antidehini, men are more commonly initiated
and it can however be both.
It's generally thought that only childless women can become witches.
Not every witch is a skinwalker, but every skinwalker is a witch.
In some stories, people who have attained the highest rank are called pliziati, which
means pure evil.
This can be achieved by killing a close blood relative, incest, necrophilia, or other culturally
taboo and evil acts.
Upon completing one or more of these acts, this is said to destroy their humanity and
allow them to become fully initiated into the way of witchery.
Basically, it represents the antithesis of Navajo cultural values and is this person
which has corrupted the natural order of things and is working for evil.
That weirdly kind of aligns with what cults and gangs kind of do to separate people from
their society is basically the more the last steps are taking cultural taboos so that you're
disowned by the group that you're from.
So that's interesting.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
I mean, you see that in a lot of tales.
I think we've addressed it in the past as well for things that are outside of cultural
norms.
They make up different creatures and stuff like that to warn against it as well.
This is a little bit different, but you do see that a lot.
Well, yeah, we just kind of came off of that with the boogie man slash the deals with the
devils because they're both talking about more so just general warnings that they want
to convey to the younger generations.
So the legend of the skinwalker is not well understood outside of the Navajo culture like
I kind of already addressed, both due to reluctance to discuss the subject with outsiders as well
as what Cherokee Nation academic Adrian Keeney says is a lack of the necessary cultural context
the stories are embedded within.
Well, it's a good thing every person that I've ever heard talk about it is not Navajo.
Yeah.
I had a really, really, really hard time finding any Navajo people talking.
I was able to find one which refined my notes, but I feel like I probably don't even come
close to touching what this is, but I still wanted to cover it so that we can still have
a little bit more of an understanding of this because I didn't even know any of this about
it.
Traditional Navajo are reluctant to reveal skinwalker lore to non Navajos or to discuss
it at all among those who they do not trust.
Because of that, there is a definite lack of actual skinwalker encounter stories, confusion
about what a skinwalker actually is, and just general lack of information on skinwalkers
that isn't whitewashed.
Keeney, founder of the website Native Appropriations has written in response to non Navajos incorporating
the legends into their writing.
This one specifically the impact when JK Rowling did so, she wrote something about skinwalkers
that when this is done, quote, we as native people are now opened up to a barrage of questions
about these beliefs and traditions, but these are not things that need or should be discussed
by outsiders at all.
I'm sorry if that seems unfair, but that's how our cultures survive.
So that brings a little bit more understanding to it, and I'm saying this on a podcast where
I'm talking about it.
She's not lost on me, but I otherwise didn't know this.
So I think that also talks a little bit about just the history behind it and stuff like
that as well, that I don't think a lot of people know.
Well, yeah, the people that are talking about this are generally in the conspiracy world.
I feel like they take some liberties with the information.
Not only that, but anytime I've heard any talk about skinwalkers, I've never heard that
information I just gave you.
So I feel like that's as important in telling the story of what I was able to find about
skinwalkers, whether it's correct or not in Navajo Legends, which it probably isn't, but
that is just as important to go along with the other stuff I'm going to tell you.
It's especially great if you don't want somebody challenging your narrative on your answer
to something.
And like if you're talking about skinwalkers, the people actually know about it aren't going
to call you out on it or say this is wrong because they don't want to talk about it.
That's true.
Yeah.
So let's talk now that I've got kind of through that stuff.
Let's talk about skinwalkers.
They shape shift into an animal at will that they have killed and skinned, marked with
designs, put it through another ritual to be able to be worn to shape shift into and
they transform by wearing that pelt.
The skin may just be a mask of the animal, which is the only garment worn in the initiation
ritual, and some Navajos describe the skinwalker as a perfect version of the animal in question.
So it has perfect fur.
It has perfect coloring.
Everything about it is perfect.
There's no earwraps.
It's making me.
Oh, good.
Okay.
Yeah.
They are most frequently seen as a coyote, a wolf, a fox, eagle, owl, or a crow.
The Yinalduci is said to have the power to assume the form of any animal they choose,
a decision based on what specific abilities are needed for them at that specific moment.
So for example, they have to have killed it and pelted it.
Yes.
Yeah.
Which will be relevant to something I say soon, hopefully.
So for example, a skinwalker may use a crow if they need to travel really fast in pursuit
of something or to escape or otherwise.
Some of these animals are also mostly associated with witchcraft as well, which would be like
the trickster coyote from what?
The crow and owl.
And the rodents, yeah.
Yeah.
They're also associated with death or bad omens.
So do they have to skin the bird?
Yeah.
Maybe.
I don't think birds work like that because they have feathers.
Yeah, that's my worry.
With the feathers stay on it?
That's the hard part.
I'm trying to figure this out.
But also, I'm a little bit curious if they could skin a human.
I mean, yeah, you could.
We've all seen.
Okay.
Now, what about creatures that don't necessarily skin?
Can you give a spider?
No, because in a talk about this, let's just talk about it now.
You can't, like, they're not going to be able to shape shift into a spider because logically,
that just doesn't make sense, a human becoming a spider.
Oh, that's the ridiculous part.
Okay.
It's just logical.
Okay, but like a raccoon size.
No, like you couldn't.
No.
Okay, it's just not logical.
No, it's not.
It's too tiny.
I mean, a bird meat.
What about a turtle?
No, too small, maybe, because a turtle would be the size of it.
No, turtles can be huge.
But you don't really skin it.
You can't skin it.
You just like steal it's shell.
Yeah, okay.
Yeah, so blah, blah, blah, bad omen.
And just sorry, a little bit more along this line of reasoning I'd like to discuss.
They're just located here, right?
So there hasn't been like a rise in the last 50 years or so of travel for the purpose of
gaining like exotic powers for skin walkers.
All you're going to Africa and getting some lines.
So all your questions, I promise you are going to be answered.
Okay.
So be patient and sink ships or however that day in goes.
I'll save my ship sinking for the end.
I think that's how that works.
These are also animals that are seen in the Navajo Nation.
So they're not going to really shape shift into like a zebra or something or a mouse.
It's not an appropriate size.
Just doesn't make sense.
So skin walkers are specific to Navajo territory.
And how I heard talk about it, the skin walker and Navajos gain the power from the Navajo
surrounding the hills, the mountains, the landscape and the animals.
Yeah.
Where I've heard it talked about, it's not impossible that they could travel and spend
time in the landscape somewhere else and be able to gain power from a different location
once they're familiar with the territory.
But it's highly unlikely that they're going to gain the same type of power that the skin
walkers do in their traditional territory.
So when we talk about this, you're not likely to see skin walkers anywhere else other than
the Navajo territory.
If you're seeing something else similar to this, you're seeing something else.
Some Navajo also believe that skin walkers have the ability to steal the face of a person.
They are commonly believed to be the color white while in animal form.
This is how many distinguish a skin walker in animal form from a regular animal.
The Navajo believe that if you ever lock eyes with the skin walker, they can absorb themselves
into your body.
Locking eyes aside, it is said that the skin walker can possess a living animal or people
and walk around in their bodies.
Alternatively, some Navajos believe that if you make eye contact with the skin walker,
your body will freeze up with fear and the skin walker will use that fear to gain power
and energy.
That's something that you see with a lot of paranormal things that they thrive on fear,
which is definitely a huge component to the skin walker.
To say skin walker out loud will attract them to you as if you've been marked.
Say their name aloud is to invite them to yourself.
So basically I'm feeling a little nervous.
However, I feel that only applies in Navajo territory.
I feel like I'm far enough away from Arizona and New Mexico that they didn't hear me just
say that.
Unless they're in some animal form that can hear me from there.
Some say that skin walkers can have the power to read humans thoughts.
They also possess the ability to make any human or animal noise they choose regardless
of their current form.
A skin walker may use the voice of a relative or the cry of an infant to lure victims out
of the safety of their homes since a skin walker cannot enter an inhabited home without
invitation similar to vampires.
A skin walker can be heard calling your name in the same kind of fashion where you hear
your mom call you from outside.
It will call your name from the trees from outside your house just to get you outside
of safety.
A skin walker will also use a dog whistle or bone whistle to stop dogs from barking so
they can sneak up close to your home and use powders and perform ceremonies to put your
dogs and protectors to sleep.
It is also said that if you're driving at night through a Navajo reservation they will
run along your car and knock on your window.
If you look at them or acknowledge them they will curse and or kill you and they gain power
from killing obviously because it's evil.
And or kill you.
And or.
So they might curse you and then kill you.
I mean it seems like a waste.
That's just me.
Yeah it seems like a waste to kill you at that point.
But I mean maybe they're cursing your soul and then you take that with you after you're
dead which is way more worse.
Yeah.
Let's sit with that for a moment.
Skin walkers use spells and charms to instill fear and control their victims.
Fear is the best weapon they have.
Skin walkers use natural based elements as weapons.
They're grave robbers.
They dig up bodies and use the bones as knives, arts, whistles.
They grind up bones to make a powder which they would use to paralyze you and blow the
powder into your face to curse and kill you.
They'll use decaying flesh as a poison to inflict sickness.
Skin walkers have been known to find traces of their victims' hair.
Wrap it around a pot shard and place it into a tarantula hole.
I'm not sure what that does but they do do that.
That sounds bad.
Yeah it does sound really bad.
A skin walker can use anything of personal belonging and use it in ceremonial rituals
against the person they're doing evil against.
Even live rattlesnakes are known to be used as charms by the skin walker.
And kind of like I was saying earlier they're super fast so there are reports of people
driving 100 plus kilometers an hour in the middle of the night and skin walkers have
been spotted running with the vehicle.
Not to be confused with the skin walker, some medicine men are said to be in tune with the
flow of nature so that they would often take the form of a sacred totem animal.
Totem animals are kind, gentle animals that have grown on humans so much that they acquire
a sacredness and are honored with dances, music, and artwork.
Medicine men practice healing, blessings, and the removal of curses whereas a skin walker
seeks to harm humans, lay curses, and practice evil whenever possible.
So huge difference between the two.
Distinct difference between medicine men and community healers?
They're positive.
Witches are seen as evil performing harmful ceremonies and manipulative magic in a perversion
of the good works medicine people traditionally perform.
In order to practice their good works, traditional healers may learn about both good and evil
magic in order to protect a game's evil, but people who choose to become witches are
seen as corrupt.
Well, sightings you ask?
Of course.
I was able to find a few.
However, in putting this together I did notice a few things.
In my long search this took me a while.
Number 1 – Indigenous people will usually not comment on this.
Number 2 – I found a lot of encounters that were not skin walkers, according to what I
just told you.
And we're probably more leaning towards a crawler.
Crawlers being mimics who are lanky in all fours and up on hind legs, super creepy kinda
things.
Yeah, it may see it as white people, like sorry, and I shouldn't say white people,
very, very albino colored.
So they're totally different things and that just goes to show that a lot of people don't
understand what a skin walker is.
Others would be a Wendigo.
People spot Wendigos and think that it's a skin walker.
That being the body of a man and the head of a…
A Wendigo is a person who has succumbed to anabolism.
Yeah, I think it's kind of similar, but it has antlers or the head of a moose or something.
It depends on which native culture you're going with because they all kind of have their
own Wendigo.
Okay, we'll have to cover Wendigo in the future.
And so on.
So remember skin walkers disguise as animals.
And usually you can't tell the difference except that it's acting a little bit weird.
Like it's up on its hind legs.
That's more than a little bit weird.
I mean, depending on the creature.
True.
I mean, the coyote, I'd be a little creeped out if it was just like walking around on
two legs.
Yeah.
It could be…
But bears do that.
They look creepy, but they do this.
And they look like they're humans in costumes.
That's what they're…
Or it's, you know, a coyote that is staring at you in this super creepy way.
They're acting outside of a way that's normal for the animal.
It's almost like it doesn't know how to be that animal, but it's that animal.
Skin walkers are similar.
Inhabit the area of the Navajo and other tribes within that tribe.
So New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, this is their legend and is specifically an evil witch of
that tribe.
So while sightings elsewhere can fit.
Like I said, it's more likely to be another creature than a skin walker.
You're not really going to have a skin walker encounter outside of that area.
The skin walker is very misunderstood, I find.
After reading all this.
And before this, I misunderstood it as well.
It might be sad about that.
Maybe that's its problem.
Yes, the misunderstood creature.
So first sighting is from Navajo underscore Joe on Reddit 11 years ago.
So you know this is legit.
You really should have just gone with Navajo.
Yeah.
Someone commented that.
Oh, good.
I think it was taken.
Was it me 11 years ago?
You will never know.
Let's listen to the encounter.
Quote, this is Navajo Joe talking now.
I was a kid when this happened.
My uncle and I were finishing up chopping and gathering firewood for my grandmother because
it was getting dark.
Driving back on a dirt road at about 30 miles per hour, give or take five miles per hour.
And that could literally be any amount of kilometers per hour because I have no idea
what that means in my language.
I had this awful sense of being watched.
Before I could turn to look out my window, passenger side window, my uncle quickly shouted,
don't.
I completely froze.
My heart felt like it was beating out of my chest.
Then completely stopped when I heard tap tap on my window.
My uncle sped up and was loudly praying in my native language.
I didn't know what was going on and I thought it was over until our truck suddenly dipped
from the bed, which is the back of the truck.
My uncle then started saying, look at me and don't turn away over and over.
Then I heard it again.
Tap tap, but from the window behind me.
It was getting harder for me to breathe and I wanted to cry.
A minute or two passed and the truck dipped again.
My uncle looked around inside.
It was quiet besides the truck and the road.
He looked at me and said, we will ask your father to do a prayer in the morning so that
the evil will forget our faces.
That's the Navajo to English equivalent translation.
I remember curling up on the seat and just staring at the radio watching the time, listening
to my uncle sing an old prayer till we got to my grandmother's house.
That's the end of that one.
This one, I'm not sure where it came from, but I'll read it.
Grandpa owned a large herd of sheep, which during the summer grazed in the mountains
in central Utah.
In the 1960s, his sheep herder was a small Mexican man.
We'll call him Juan.
Juan stayed in a very small trailer in a meadow while tending the sheep.
One evening, grandpa dredged his truck up the mountain to deliver some food and supplies
to Juan.
As he nears Juan's camp, he starts seeing dead sheep all over the ground.
Many of the sheep were thrashed into pieces as he arrives at Juan's trailer.
He finds the door shut.
He has to kick open the door to get inside as Juan has locked it.
Inside Juan is curled up into a ball mumbling incoherently and likely in shock.
Grandpa picks up Juan, throws him into the truck and takes off down the mountain to get
Juan to a doctor.
As he is flying down the twisty dirt road, Grandpa gets this terrible feeling like he's
being watched and sees something out of the corner of his eye.
By the time the sun is setting and the light isn't very good, he turns to look out the
passenger side window and sees a creature he describes as looking like an inside out
deer.
Holy crap that is fucking terrifying.
Running alongside the truck, oh Jesus.
The creature drops back out of sight only to come bounding back even faster, running
on his hind legs only.
The creature then ran across the road right in front of the truck.
Grandpa swaps to miss it and ends up rolling the truck down the mountain side.
Juan is killed in the accident and Grandpa spends more than a month in the hospital.
It's possible that grandpa's playing with us, but that really wasn't his style.
He was an old cowboy and swore that was the truth.
He prodded up when we were making fun of Chupacabras.
He believed that it was some sort of Chupacabra like animal he saw.
Okay and I'm reading this in Skinwalker.
But holy crap that is creepy.
Yeah, also I feel like he would have some sort of proof that he was in the hospital
for a month because he rolled a car and somebody died.
I think it's more the story of why he crashed the car.
I feel like if I was to make up the story about why I crashed a car I wouldn't make
up a story to tell my grandkids of like an inside out deer running next to the car.
Full speed on Chupacabras.
That is elaborate.
It's not something you just make up out of your imagination.
Get this I was just driving along and then out of nowhere.
So next one and what is the tale about skinwalkers without a tale out of the infamous skinwalker
ranch?
You knew there had to be some skinwalkers in that book.
One night Terry Sherman who owned the ranch heard a noise outside and he was startled
to see a wolf in his yard.
One much larger than any he had ever seen.
Terry grabbed his gun from inside and shot the wolf several times but his bullets appeared
to do no damage whatsoever.
Although the wolf did take off eventually its tracks disappeared entirely as Terry chased
it as if it had simply vanished into thin air.
Another similar encounter Terry and Gwen Sherman were startled by the sight of a fearsome animal
perhaps a wolf or coyote stalking towards their livestock pen.
When it grabbed a calf in its jaws.
Terry fired at it with the handgun and then a rifle.
Despite being hit the creature didn't seem hurt and simply wandered away into the bushes.
It had a foul stench like rotting flesh and it stayed with them.
They can remember the smell really well.
And if memory serves correctly I also believe that one of the first encounters they had
at the ranch when they moved was the wolf that came right up to them and it seemed really
tame.
It didn't.
It seemed tame.
It was right off.
I believe they petted.
Until it attacked a cow.
Yeah and which was way later but I think they petted actually when it came up to them and
they remember it being a huge wolf if memory serves correctly.
I didn't pull that one.
Yeah.
Just to give a bit of context to that as well.
That's a very small part of the book.
The entire skinwalker ranch is mostly not skinwalker related.
Yes.
Thank you for pointing that out.
It's got a glimmer person.
It got UFOs.
It's got bigfoot.
It's got everything.
It's got a big hunting RV.
Yeah.
It's got like portals.
Portals.
That's when you said that the same thing.
Another story from the book relays an account from a New Mexico Highway Patrol officer
and he states that while patrolling the highways of New Mexico he saw a skinwalker on two separate
occasions.
In his first encounter a creature wearing a white mask appeared next to his window seemingly
attaching itself to the car door but then he realized it was simply running beside the
vehicle keeping pace at highway speed. Can you imagine having that sighting and being like,
oh look at that guy with a mask. Oh shit, I'm driving it like 100 kilometers in the hour.
What the fuck? Why is that guy just standing there? No, he's moving. Hey, I'm moving. I'm driving.
I'm driving. I should be attentive. The way that's weird. It's a good thing the cops are pulling me over.
I just picture him with like an iPhone in his hand like scroll.
A few days later and around the same area he encountered the creature again,
what makes this tale even more intriguing is that at least one other officer claimed to have seen
the same ghoulish being while patrolling the area. Of course, like Taylor said, there is much more
than this going on in the ranch and in the book. And just a side note as I was looking into this,
since there's less secrecy now about where Skinwalker Ranch is located, you can google the
exact location of Skinwalker Ranch now and literally on the same plot of land, and there's the road
in front Skinwalker Ranch, on the opposite side on the road behind is a campground. I wonder if it
was there before all the like stories came out. I don't know, but it also comes up as like one of
the most haunting campgrounds in the United States. Also, yeah, I was pretty sure that we knew the
location of it just because it was for sale not that long ago. Historically, it's in Utah in the
U.N.T.A. Basin and it was owned by Robert Bigelow for a long time, but we did an episode on. I believe
he sold it probably three or four years ago and I think there's still a group that's doing research
that owns it, but it's not Robert Bigelow. Yeah, and when the book was out anyway, they didn't want to
disclose the location of where it was. So maybe it was around the time they put it up for sale that
they figured it out, but yeah, not a secret anymore. So if you want an experience, go to the
campground. I'm not going, especially after talking about this because I'm marked now. Oh no, yeah,
they know you said those words. Yeah, I can never go to Utah again. This one's from Rudditor
Neptune 420. My father owns a small delivery service that operates out of Farmington, New Mexico.
He mostly delivers small packages out to the middle of nowhere that are too much of a hassle for
the larger delivery companies to bother with. My dad is the only employee and we have a few
pickup trucks in a trailer. One day we get a delivery out to Window Rock, Arizona on the Navajo
reservation about two hours from Farmington. My dad gets the call for the job while he's chilling
with his Navajo friend Travis and his girlfriend. Travis mentions how he's got family in Window Rock
that he hasn't seen in ages and suggests they go with him. I was about six or seven at the time
and it was summertime so dad decides we'll all go down together. He can do his delivery really
quick then while Travis sees his family we can go check out the Window Rock which is a rock,
famous rock. Looks like a window or can you see through it? Uh yes, big rock face with a large
hole in it that goes to the other side. Pretty cool. Okay. Yeah, so it's exactly as it sounds.
We had to convoy and separate trucks since my dad's was loaded down with freight. We decided to
bring along some walkie talkie, she calls them talkie talkies, so we could communicate with one
another. We spend our time in Window Rock. Everything is generally uneventful and we start
heading home to the old highway with my dad and I in front and Travis and his girlfriend in their
truck behind us. I honestly don't remember most of the Window Rock trip but this part I can never
forget. We're somewhere on the highway between Window Rock and Gallup, New Mexico. It had just
rained earlier in the day and the road was kind of slick so we were taking it pretty slow. On the
left of the highway there is nothing but sandstone cliffs and to the right there's a huge field
separated from the road by a small barbed wire fence. We crest the top of this hill and down at
the bottom of the hill we see what appears to be a very large dog sitting back on his haunches
in the middle of the road facing the cliffs. My dad calls over the radio, hey Trav, do you see that
big-ass dog? Travis starts yelling back over the radio, that is not a dog. Speed up right now and
hit it. He sounds almost hysterical. It just screams, hit it. You have to hit it. Please,
please hit that fucking thing right now. This is not on the road right? I thought it was in the
center of the road. Oh it was in the middle of the road. Okay I was just reading. I wasn't actually
you know processing what I was reading. So my dad starts to speed up and as we get a bit, would you
question that? But someone's like just hit the dog. Hit the dog. I'd be like are you in the dog?
Don't worry buddy you need to. Yeah. Like you hit the dog. He passed me.
I'm not gonna hit the dog. Okay so my dad starts to speed up and so he's just taking his word for it.
So he speeds up and as they get a bit closer I can begin to see it a little more clearly. It's
covered in this brown, wiry matted hair that appears to have dried blood all over it. It's
still facing the cliffs but the moment our headlights hit it it turns and looks at us and it had a
face. Oh my god. I don't know how else to describe it. I'm assuming it's human face. Because everything
does have a face. Well not everything but yeah. But most living things have face. I don't know how
else to describe it other than a mix between a bear's and a human's face. There we go. We got
answers. We just had to be patient. It looks twisted and distorted and almost in pain. As we get
closer to this thing we start to realize it's actually fucking huge. Well they said big ass dog.
I assume that means huge. Though it was still sitting on its haunches it is about shoulder
height with the hood of the truck. We get literally inches from hitting it when it lets out a scream
that sounds like someone's screaming as their lungs were filling up with water and it leaps
backwards towards the field landing just on our side of the barbed wire fence. Then with another
leap it was gone from sight. Travis comes over the radio again. Holy shit keep driving. We have
to get out of here. We have to go faster. He kept repeating that last part. We have to get out of
here. We have to go faster. Pretty soon we are speeding like crazy and just as we start to come
near the outskirts of Gallop we get pulled over. Travis pulls his truck over with us. Naturally this
makes a cop and Navajo man himself very on edge and immediately asks why Travis felt the need to
pull over as well. Travis says we just saw a skin walker a few miles back and it's been following
us. The officer immediately turns white, stammers something about verbal warnings, gets in his
car and takes off. We do the same. We didn't see anything else that night but when we got home
Travis refused to let us leave without taking some kind of Navajo totem thing that was supposed to
keep it away. That's another thing. I didn't put it in here but that's another thing that once it
kind of sees you. It's got a mind for faces right? Where it's kind of like you know those people who
they'll remember meeting you they don't know your name. Yeah they've just got yeah those people.
Those people are skin walkers. Searching for your face. This one is from I love Reddit names
Redditor iron underscore Jesus. Anybody that has been on the Navajo reservation has either
probably heard of some creepy things or has experienced pretty creepy things namely skin
walkers. I've only seen one. Here's my story. I come from a small town in northern Arizona
that's sandwiched between the Payute reservation to the north and the US's largest Navajo reservation
to the south. My high school being so small a 1a high school that has on average 80 students
enrolled every year always had to travel south about five to ten hours one way to play another
high school in any sport. I mean why would they do that? That's a lot of travel. This means that
we traveled a lot on the Navajo res and we usually stayed at hotels when we would head out to play
and come home in the morning but this trip was a little bit different. I remember the basketball
coach saying that the school didn't have enough money to put up the teams in a hotel that trip
so we were going to be on the road for a total of about 12 hours. I was the only male senior to
play basketball that season. Why is he traveling then? Like that's a- You see only basketball player.
And he's traveling to play other teams. We had just got done playing our game and headed home on
our bus. This doesn't even make sense. Big blue which is their bus. We were headed out and it wasn't
long about two hours of driving before we had entered the res. By this time everyone was asleep
with it being about two in the morning. When we had crossed the res's border I noticed the bus
driver had sped up and was now going about 85 miles per hour. I thought this was a little weird
because he never exceeded the speed limit at least not in my high school career. For some reason I
couldn't fall asleep like the rest of my teammates and I just sat at the back of the bus staring
across the desolate desert landscape that was lit up by a full moon. That's never good. As I looked
out I could see a figure running towards the bus at an angle of pursuit and keeping up with the bus
at 85 miles per hour. As the figure got closer I saw that it was a humanoid form. As a matter of
fact it looked exactly like a human only the face was painted half black and half white with glowing
eyes. Glowing eyes like a rabbit's eyes reflecting light from a spotlight. I immediately thought
holy crap it's a skinwalker. The skinwalker ran up to the edge of the road and just kept up pace with
the bus curdling stage brush and rocks while staring at me. After I made eye contact with the
thing I could not look away. It was as if something was holding my head and eyes in place. The skin
walker just smiled at me this inhumane smile that went ear to ear showing crooked yellow pointed
teeth. I felt like I was going to throw up and I was panicking through the whole ordeal. The skin
walker started to crumple down onto all fours still keeping up with the bus. I could see his
bones crack and reform. Hair started appearing all over the skin walker's body and in about three
seconds was now a coyote and it ran off back into the desert out of view. As soon as it was gone I
ran to the onboard bathroom and puke a mixture of food and blood. That's a nice detail. I didn't
want to tell anyone for fear they would think I was crazy. I confided in my Navajo friend. She told
me that I needed to see the chief who also happened to be a friend of mine and get a blessing. I saw
him the next school day in the parking lot. He just came out to me and mumbled something in Navajo
and waving a feather scepter like thing. Turned around gotten a stretch interval way. To this day
I haven't seen another skinwalker. I told you he got scammed. It might be due to the fact I moved
away from the town and the res and if I do have to go around I go way around. I just I want to make
sure that I understand the story. So it's the middle of the night and this guy comes running up
85 miles an hour. Looks in the window smiles turns into a coyote and runs away. Yeah. Like just
poking it and then looks at that guy and smiles. Yeah. No you got it and he was the basketball
team so I assume he was the only one on the bus. After I'm what I'm assuming was a huge loss
to another basketball team. I basically just skim these stories to make sure they fit because I
also like to be involved in hearing it for the first time. Yes I'm fair that the reader doesn't
get that experience. I skim. I skim okay. I make sure that it fits and this one fit.
Basically as far as swimming goes. I'm really worried that the chief isn't taking his role
seriously though like it seems like that kid got scammed. Oh yeah. Like school parking lots
together and glad. I've never heard of a feather scepter I can only imagine what that is like.
Okay this one's from Redditor and doolos. I was told this story once. My dad isn't a
bullshitter or a liar so I know this story is true. I'm going to assume it's his dad's story
and he's not just telling us that his dad is not a bullshitter. Here's history continues. It was
the very early 80s and my sister who lived in Toronto came down to visit our parents for a weekend.
She was staying in a friend's house who loaned her car so she could come out. After her visit she
left a little after 9 p.m. She got maybe seven to eight miles away when the car broke down.
Thankfully she broke down in front of a friend of the family's house. They let her in to call dad
and dad came to get her. The family said she could leave the car in the driveway for the night and
my sister decided to just stay in my parents for the night. It was now a little after 10 p.m. in
pitch black in late November. While my sister and dad are driving back to the house and they pass
through a heavily wooded area. Out of nowhere they hear an incredibly fucking loud inhumane scream.
I was heard over the engine them talking and the radio. Dad slammed on the brakes and they both started
freaking out when suddenly a six foot tall coyote walking on two legs with a black and white striped
tail appeared on the side of the road and proceeded to walk in front of the car. As soon as it passed
that same scream played again only this time 10 times louder. Dad slammed on the accelerator and
they got the fuck out of there. It was never seen again. That's the end of the story. And to end
with I particularly liked to comment of a redditor on one of the sightings that didn't make it to
my list mostly because I don't believe it fit as a skinwalker. Ruthard Dare commented quote best advice
from an indigenous person don't yell at them next time. Obviously this person was yelling something
at this creature that had spotted. Stay quiet stay still and if you hear your name no you didn't.
If you hear someone calling for help no you didn't. Oh and don't whistle at night. He continues on
about the whistling. I was told they will whistle back and whistling lets them know exactly where
you are and which way you're going. And end quote by them and I think that's just generally good
information to have when dealing with any cryptid. In just life don't help people. Yeah don't whistle
definitely don't fucking whistle. Don't whistle don't help. Somebody says your name they didn't. No just keep walking.
This is good life advice. Yeah great life advice so that's it that's the skinwalker the Yinald Dushi
any comments. I'm just curious Chelsea if they were to open a zoo in Navajo territory could the
skinwalker take those animals. I guess theoretically they could because so long as they're there but
you also see it attributed to non-todam like non-secret animals. Like they wouldn't be natural to the environment too yeah.
It seems like they take their power from things that are within the environment so yeah I mean
theoretically they could definitely in one that I did listen to he was Navajo. His name is Shantzian
Shadow Productions on YouTube. He talked about skinwalkers he's Navajo. He said theoretically
they could shape-shift into something else like I said earlier if they say went and were able to
acclimatize to different landscape and gain power from that particular landscape so I'm thinking yes
technically they could. Okay would they want to I don't know. Yeah they seem too traditional yeah.
Okay and my second question which is a little more realistic but likely has an equally vague
answer so like borders are arbitrary we've put them there just for reasons that aren't cultural in
nature for the people to particularly inhabit the region before we got there. Yeah so are there
stories south of the border into Mexico because that would also I believe that Navajo would go into
Mexico. I don't believe they do. Okay but they would culturally be close to whatever would be
below them too because like we said like the Apache and whatnot and the Hopi have similar
stories. Yeah but I know I understand it also very hard to know much about it that's the Chihuahua
regions right below New Mexico so. I mean every indigenous as far as I understand is gonna have
their own sort of creature. I believe the Wendigo is more of a Canadian. Yes because it has to do
more with starvation and winter. Yes. Like that's the big thing about the Wendigo. I don't know
where the line draws because obviously those indigenous don't have the same legend of the
skin walker so obviously there is some sort of separation and the Navajo likewise don't have
the Wendigo type creature. They have this though it's not like an equivalent. I wouldn't call it
an equivalent. It does extend a little bit more so the Pueblo people Apache Hopi and Ute. I don't
know enough about where their lands. Well yeah but it seems to go all from Utah at least. Yeah.
All the way down to New Mexico and Arizona. Yeah. I don't think it just stopped at that border
is what I'm trying to get at so I would be curious to see kind of what their interpretation is and
on the Mexican side. I don't know and like I said it's like the Wendigo so I'm sure there are other
types of legends that go along. Every culture has their own kind of things that go along with
legends right so where that border lies no idea. I'm assuming it wouldn't be a land border it would
be more of a cultural border. Yeah we wouldn't find the line on the map. Yeah. I think that's what you
mean. Well we could maybe but as far as where their willingness is in here. Yeah. And even so they can
leave from there but it does draw power from the land so you would think there might be some sort
of physical border as well. Yeah. Yeah. That was a much. It's an interesting thing to think about I
think. No that I didn't make sense of it. No answer. It was philosophical in nature for it was inside
our hearts. Yes. Yeah. And with our hearts speaking like that I think that's a good place to end it
Chelsea that was a fun episode. Is there anything you wanted to end with. No. Okay well I have been
Taylor here with Chelsea. We are Journey to the Fringe. Thank you all for listening and we'll see
you next week. Bye. Thank you for listening to Journey to the Fringe. If you have liked what you
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