- ...Channel 4 News
at 4:00--
How they could turn in--
they could just be, like,
a regular human being.
Like the person that you
probably bumped into
might've been a skinwalker,
might've have been
a medicine man,
might've been just
a regular person.
They could be regular people,
you don't even know it.
And how they turn
into the animals...
...by k*lling the person
you love most.
We're told not to talk
about the, uh, skinwalkers.
It's a-- it's like a bad taboo.
Or any kind of cryptid.
The things that I've
just mentioned,
we're told not to talk about.
The big bigfoot,
the skinwalker, the gargoyles,
all that stuff that's--
that surround the area,
we're told not to talk about it.
Um, why? We've asked why,
and they just--
it's, it's a bad omen.
Navajo witchcraft
is one of the most...
...scariest witchcrafts
I've ever been around.
That was just way,
way different.
Don't talk about skinwalker.
Who are they? What are they?
How do they walk
through the ethers?
Why do you wanna know?
They're people that got stuck
or they're people being
used for witchcraft.
Are they between-world things?
Are they things? I don't know.
And I don't want them
hanging around me either.
There's a lot of history here,
a lot of, uh,
strange things here.
There's famous murders
that took place in, uh, 1974
here in Chokecherry Canyon
that, uh,
involved some tribal magic
and some curses
that were flung about.
The, the Navajo,
or the Din, as they prefer,
uh, Navajo is actually a name
given to them by the Ute...
...but, uh, they, they're still
known as the Navajo
and it's called
the Navajo Nation Reservation.
That's the biggest
presence here,
which have the Ute
and the Sleeping Ute
just up the road
going toward Colorado.
There's Pueblos,
there's the Aztecs,
there's all kinds of ones
that I couldn't think of.
Everything is basically
Navajo here, anyway.
There're several stories
that have happened in that area.
Farmington is kind of a hotbed
of supernatural happenings.
There was a few
UFO crashes in the area.
Aztec had one,
Farmington had one
that was pretty hush-hush.
Farmington is very rich
in Native American culture.
It is-- Shiprock is right there,
it's about 40 minutes
west of Farmington,
and it's the largest Indian
reservation in North America.
And there's a strangeness in,
in the mountains there.
Anywhere there's tribal lands,
you're gonna run
into some things
that you don't understand,
that, that you're
not meant to understand
because it doesn't have
anything to do with you.
I'm part Cherokee.
There's, there's certain things
that you don't talk about.
The elders of the tribe
will admonish you
for talking about
or even thinking about,
in some cases,
some of these, uh, creatures
because that can draw it to you,
it gives an energy to,
to bring it to you.
A lot of people believe that,
especially
in the Chokecherry area,
that it may have been
either a cursed area
or it could've been
a burial area.
And there are a lot of those
that they're finding
in Farmington now,
burial areas that they
didn't know about.
Out there, there have been--
there's a witches' circle
out there, uh,
lots of sacrifices have
taken place out there.
And, yes, there are
skinwalker stories.
A lot of Native Americans
say that that land is cursed
and that, uh,
because of the evil
that has been done
on the soil out there,
that it's, it's a cursed
patch of earth.
And there's a lot
of Native Americans
that will not go
out there at all.
To me, a skinwalker, it's,
it's a Navajo, um, tradition
or a legend, if you will.
It's something that,
uh, it can take on any form.
Hence the, the skinwalker name.
It can, uh,
disguise itself as, uh,
many kinds of animals
or even people.
It can even mimic a loved one.
To me, dog-man
more falls in line
- with the European werewolf
legends. It's a changeling...
...it's something that changes
from one thing to another.
And depending
on the version of that,
I think it's a little different
with the Navajo
than it is, say,
the Ute or the Sleeping Ute.
I think the dog-man,
it's just that.
It's, it's, it's a dog-man,
whereas he doesn't have
the ability to change
into other creatures
like a skinwalker does.
So they could even mimic
your family member,
they can-- uh, I've heard it
called stealing a face,
where they can then
take on somebody else.
Well, in the, the, the most
popular telling of the legend,
it's somebody
who's tasted human flesh,
uh, that, that's like
an a*t*matic way to get it.
But then, it can also be
put on you by a shaman
or a medicine man, somebody
that you've angered in some way.
It can be put on you that way.
There's a lot
of tribal magic out here
and a lot of, uh, curses
and, and things like that.
And again,
it depends on the tribe
as to what they are
and how serious.
But from the Navajo,
the Din that I've talked to,
there's some serious magic
that they have access to,
their shamans
and their medicine men.
I am Sandy Lewis
and my encounter happened
in Farmington, New Mexico.
When we were teenagers,
we had an area
out in Chokecherry.
Back then,
we would go get pallets,
um, and have bonfires,
um, late at night.
There's a big wash
in that area too.
So, a wash in the desert
is just an area of sand
where water will come through
when there's runoff.
So we're standing around,
all talking one night
and have a bonfire going.
Off in the distance,
down the wash,
we could see a light.
A couple of friends pointed out,
"Hey, that light's
getting kind of closer and,
and it's only one light."
So, okay, maybe
a four-wheeler, a motorcycle.
And, um,
as we're standing talking,
the light is advancing,
advancing, advancing,
and we didn't hear a motor,
which should've been
our first clue
that it wasn't a vehicle.
Pretty soon, you could tell
it was somebody walking
that's carrying kind of like
this lantern-type light.
So that was weird too.
So there's this little old lady.
So she approaches
and is asking people for a ride.
So my friends, Trish and Kelly,
asked where she lived,
and she was very vague about it,
she just said, uh,
she needed a ride up to NAPI,
which is the, uh,
Navajo Agricultural Area
west of Farmington.
They're kind of driving along.
It's probably
two o'clock in the morning,
and she just abruptly says,
"Pull off here."
They're literally--
there's no lights.
It's a big open field,
there's no other traffic around,
there's no other people around.
And Trish says, "Are you sure?
You know, are you sure
you wanna get out here?"
She says, "Yeah, I'll,
I'll just walk from here."
So Trish and Kelly get back in
and they're,
they're just kind of sitting,
watching her just walk
across this field.
There's no road there,
she's just walking
across this field.
The light kind of just
disappears off into the distance
and they're like, "Wow,
that was really weird, right?"
And so they're kind of just
sitting there discussing that
when the, the light
abruptly just goes out.
All of a sudden,
they can see something moving,
coming towards them
at a fast pace now.
And before they could
even get out of their mouth
what they were seeing
to each other,
this dog, huge dog,
comes running out
in front and sit--
it just stands
in front of their truck.
The dog was like
a wolf-type dog
and it was big.
She said it was huge.
She had a lifted truck,
and the dog was able to,
like, on all fours,
not very far away
from the truck,
probably just a few feet away
from the truck, on all fours,
look, look at them
almost in the eye.
And so she starts the truck,
and they look
and now the dog is gone.
And so, they go to pull out
onto the highway
and the lady is now
standing there
and she looks much older.
Gray hair, long gray hair,
um, has on, uh, period clothing
from probably mid to late 1800s.
She had the same color eyes,
same facial structure,
she was just aged
and aged by years.
She said,
"If I had to guess an age,
she was probably
in her eighties or nineties."
She-- and she's just
standing there staring at them.
And Trish is so freaked out,
she doesn't even know
what to do.
Kelly's yelling at her to go,
"Just get on the road! Go!"
And she says, you know,
Trish's like, "I can't go.
She's standing in my way."
And so she goes to back up
and they look again,
the lady has now gone
from the front of the vehicle
to behind the vehicle.
So, Trish hits the gas,
they get back onto the road,
she goes to turn around,
and now there's a dog standing
in the middle of the road,
it's just kind of sitting there
staring at them.
She said, "We, we just
swerved around the dog
and we just got down the road."
She said, "We went
back to my house."
So they get up the next morning.
Kelly asked Trish
to take her home.
They, they go out to the truck,
and on the passenger side,
you could see down
the passenger side of the truck
where something--
with-- claw marks
all down the passenger
side of her truck.
She took Kelly home
and they swore
to never talk about it again.
Trish, however, shared their,
their experience
with the rest of the group,
and we all kind of agreed that,
um, it was probably a skinwalker
that she had given
a ride to that night.
And the, the shape-shifting
from the older lady
to the animal,
i-- we kind of got
a feel that that--
and the way they told the story,
they were never separate,
it was one or the other.
There-- the dog wasn't ever
there with the lady.
It was one or the other.
And so, that led me to believe,
and several others,
that it was probably
a skinwalker.
- Uh, my name is
Susy K. Ashcroft.
We're in Albuquerque,
New Mexico,
and I have some stories
that I want out there
before anything else happens.
The main stories
are about the reservation.
I was raised on the reservation,
o-- on the Navajo Reservation.
You know, my grandparents
were born in the 1880s.
They, they were born
right after the Indian Wars.
So-- and grandma
was Paiute and dark
and granddad was
redhead and blue-eyed.
That was kind of a combination.
And, um, you know,
back in those days,
there was lots
of discrimination.
So they hid out
on the res mostly.
That's where they
made their business
and the people
treated them good.
Well, the people have
always treated me good.
It was our home, that was
where we were for generations.
The Hatches and the Ashcrofts
have been out there
since-- I don't know when.
Y-- all, all the time.
You know, we were just
ditzing around being teenagers
in beautiful downtown Gallup.
We were out at, uh, Church Rock.
It was after 1970,
I'm not sure of the date,
but my friend and I
were in college by then.
We'd come home for break.
And we were up at Church Rock,
we always went up there.
We wandered around.
We'd, you know,
sit on a rock
and watch the sunset
or smoke a cigarette
or do something.
And we walked all the way.
We got up there
and we walked all the way around
the church, the rock.
And there's two big dips
when you're walking up there,
you gotta go up and then down
this big old dip
and then back up,
and then you can walk
around the, the...
...the rock, the big rock.
But there's two big rocks
sitting on either side
of that dip.
And we were coming down the dip
like we knew what we were doing
and we started
to cross a little spring
and I could see
where our footprints--
you know
when you first step in water
and in, in sand,
you're gonna muddy it.
Well, after it washes out some,
you can see footprints.
Well, our footprints were there,
and there was a footprint
as about as big
as my hand of a dog.
And I saw it, and it--
it was coming after us,
not before us, but after us.
And I told Linda,
"Look." And she goes,
"We'd better go."
And I said, "Okay."
You know, on reservation towns,
you get all of these stories
and tales of,
of the reservation.
And most of them aren't true,
but a lot of them are folklore
and we don't know
for sure if they are or not.
And the werewolf is one.
Wherever we were,
there could've been one.
And, um... so we just grew
to accept it.
Really, kind of didn't
believe it, but kind of did.
You know? And so we were aware,
and Linda and I
that day were aware.
And so, we started taking off,
we went right back
around the mount,
we started going down the dip.
And I realized
Linda wasn't with me.
And I looked back up the dip
and she's frozen sto-- solid.
And about that time,
I saw a brown blurb
run from one rock to another.
It ran just almost like us.
It kind of, like, took
the first start with a leap
'cause he was scrunched down
when I saw it--
to a leap when he jumped up
and he took off.
But then he was running
just like us.
And he was so quick. I bet
he only took two, two, two...
...lengths of legs
going across there
to get across, you know?
I mean, he, he was a big guy,
but he was brown, hairy.
And I, I looked at her,
and her, she was just like this.
And she's, she was, uh--
oh, I hope I get it right!
She was Sioux from Oklahoma.
And she knows
the superstitions like I do too.
And-- so, you know,
we just knew to get
the heck out of there.
You don't go back up there,
you don't disturb something
that's kind of living in the,
in the between-worlds.
You don't disturb them,
you leave them be.
After I saw him,
I was out of there
in a heartbeat.
You know,
and there's hills and things,
you gotta go up and down
to get out of there.
But I was already in the car
and turned it around
by the time Linda got there.
You know, I,
I mean, it terrified me.
I've never ever
been back up there.
I don't know
if he was a skinwalker.
Don't talk about those.
Who are they? What are they?
How do they walk
through the ethers?
Why do you wanna know?
I don't wanna know.
And I don't want them
hanging around me either.
I don't know what they are.
Are they between-world things?
Are they things?
What are they? I don't know.
The religiosity about them or,
or whatever the culture
you wanna think about,
they're people that got stuck
or they're people being used
for witchcraft.
Navajo witchcraft
is one of the most...
...scariest witchcrafts
I've ever been around.
And I've been-- you know,
when you're a mental
health therapist,
you have, you have a lot of...
occult experiences,
if you will.
And, um,
so I, I've been around,
but that was just way,
way different.
Yeah, I was born
and raised here,
born in Shiprock.
My life,
I'm usually just waking up,
go to my farm,
check on the cows.
That's about it.
Me and my dad, not too long ago,
had a talk about how our, um,
I mean, how our culture
is really important to us.
Uh, my mom's clan
is Tl'aashchi'i.
My dad's clan is, uh, Ashiihi.
Uh, Tl'aashchi'i means,
um, uh, Red Cheek People.
It-- and Naak din'i' is, um,
what do you call--
it's, like, supposed to be
meaning, uh, Mexican people.
That's what it means.
Oh, my grandpa is Ashiihi.
Um, acheii is, um, grandpa.
And Ashiihi is, um, Salt People.
Down here, we have skinwalkers.
How they could turn in--
they could just be, like,
the regular human being.
Like the person that you
probably bumped into
might've been a skinwalker,
might've been a medicine man,
might've been just
a regular person.
They could be regular people.
You don't even know it.
And how they turn
into the animals?
You gotta wear the skin
of the animal that they choose.
They could be a coyote,
they could be a deer,
they could be
a buffalo, whatever.
"How do they become
a skinwalker?"
That's the most frequent
question I always get.
Part of how you beco--
like, the biggest one
is by k*lling
the person you love most.
Like, you would do
anything for them.
You gotta k*ll them.
Take them to a ceremony,
do the rest of it.
I don't know the rest of it.
I never interviewed
a skinwalker,
nor do I even want
to encounter another one.
Um, that was actually
a very recent experience
when I was in Skinwalker Canyon.
A lot of people say
nothing happens there.
In the begin--
at the opening of the canyon,
it's like, really wide and open.
But the more you get into it,
the more it kind of gets
more narrower
and narrower and narrower.
And that was just--
the more you go in,
the more it's, like,
less uneven soil.
And that's probably
the best I could put it.
When me and my buddies
got there, we were just bored,
we just got done
with the car meet.
And we went down there
with our cars.
As we were going down there,
one of my buddies said,
"This is a bad idea."
And I said, "Don't worry, it's--
nothing ever happens here."
We were supposed to go
to the cave that's over there.
Walking around,
we got to going deeper
and deeper into the canyon,
and I just smelled something
very putrid, something very bad.
I look in front of me,
we had these high-power
m*llitary flashlights.
We were looking around,
and I just see this,
this giant... being.
And I-- it's probably about
seven, eight feet tall, maybe.
And you've seen the skull
of a deer head, right?
Its face was just, like,
decomposed, sunken eyes,
giant antlers.
And it ju--
and I could just see,
like, how many scars
it had on its chest.
I could see its arms
just extremely long and lanky.
It looked like it hasn't--
it looked like it just got
done k*lling something
because blood was
dripping off of its--
off of its snout.
It looked like half of it
was decomposed and...
...it was down on all two legs.
Some people say
might've been a wendigo.
They liv-- wendigos live
up north with the D-- Lakotas.
It looked right at us and I had
my, um, my g*n with me.
I usually have it on my--
I usually have it with me
wherever I go.
I know my b*ll*ts
wouldn't k*ll it,
but I know it would've hurt it.
And that skinwalker
was just too close for comfort.
I grabbed it,
took about three sh*ts at--
I just heard
this high-pitched scream.
It was very high-pitched.
We covered our ears
and it was like--
it was kind of like
a guttural gr-- growl,
kind of like a dog,
kind of, kind of like that.
It looked like
it didn't do anything,
but I just noticed
that it put its, like, claw
or hand over like this,
and just, like,
got back on its all threes
and then just ran away
for a little bit.
Probably to get
more skinwalkers, maybe,
'cause we just smelled
more and more...
...of that rotten smell.
I just see it run
and I told my buddies,
"We gotta get out of here."
We just ran and ran and ran,
and we just smelled that smell
of dead rotten flesh.
It was just,
it just stung our noses,
it was making us cry.
We were just running
as fast as we could.
I am Victoria Andersen
and the encounter happened
in my backyard in New Mexico.
There's definitely
shape-shifter leg-- legends...
...throughout the state,
but notoriously north of us.
However, you know,
there, there are rumors
that, you know, there's--
those are kind of common
in New Mexico...
...and New Mexico does have
a very high
missing persons rate.
Um, I don't know
specifically about Rio Rancho,
but New Mexico, in general,
does have a, a very high
missing persons rate.
Uh, there's a neighbor of mine
who did-- worked wildlife and...
...he says
there could be things not...
...you know, uh,
wanting to be talked about.
The Rio Rancho area
has only been developed
in the last maybe 30,
40 years tops.
So who knows what could,
could be there.
It was nighttime,
it was probably around 11:30,
and we were gonna
let our dogs out
for their one
last time for the night.
It was normally
a little bit later
than I preferred to do it,
but for some reason they,
they seemed anxious.
So we decided to let them out,
thinking they had to do
their business
before we pretty much
close up the house
for the evening
and everybody goes to bed.
So I let them out and within
probably a few minutes
- there was a fight
going on with one of my dogs...
...and...
...the two other dogs
ran into the house
just, just horribly frightened.
I went back to see what was
going on with the third dog
and looked like either some wolf
or some coyote thing,
I don't know what it was.
It was big.
It wasn't quite... coyote,
it wasn't quite a wolf,
it was very big,
and it had, uh, the third dog
in its mouth...
...um, ready to leap over
the fence with him.
So here was this
extra big whatever.
Like I said,
it kind of looked like a wolf,
but it was, but it was brown
and it was big.
Uh, I mean, it was dark.
But... there was a, a--
like I said,
a difference besides the size
and I couldn't quite identify
what specific animal.
It did have a translucent
kind of feel for it.
And I wasn't sure
if that was just the lighting,
but I-- I would really--
if, if you wanna know the truth,
I think, uh,
there was more to it
and it, it didn't have
a full solid form.
They have a little,
again, a little flicker.
I mean, I couldn't tell you
what color the eyes are,
but I just knew it was, uh,
you know, very aggressive
and it didn't seem like
it wanted to stop with the dog.
Even with my presence,
Other than having a--
some wild thing with your dog...
I mean,
that's pretty--
but I think
there's an element of extra--
um, adrenaline went through
because I didn't know
what I was dealing with.
I-- like it says, when you,
you can't identify what it is,
it's like, "Is it a coyote?
It's too big to be a coyote.
It's too--" It di--
it wasn't even fitting a wolf.
I mean, it had, like,
scraggly coyote fur,
but I know it wasn't a coyote.
It didn't really look like
a wolf 'cause it was--
uh, the structure
of it was different.
I-- just that unknowing
of what exactly
are you dealing with,
that you, you try to--
you have microseconds to try
to process and then react.
And my fear was
he was gonna take Jojo.
He was gonna take Jojo
and nobody was gonna stop it.
I didn't, I didn't let it
get that close.
Thankfully. Um, but I didn't--
you know, after the incident,
the dog was pretty traumatized.
So I didn't really investigate.
I inspected to see,
you know, what kind
of damage-- what was done.
I mean, there was
puncture wounds in it.
So, I would think
at some point it was physical,
but it did have a weird...
kind of exterior,
and it's like-- it was fur
but it was like a gray or brown.
But it did have,
at least, when the light
was shining on it,
a weird translucentness.
Uh, my name is, uh, Wes Chapman.
We're in San Juan County.
The city is Farmington,
New Mexico.
So in this, in the--
like, this is me learning
more about the area.
And looking back,
this area is riddled
with all kinds of stuff.
There's stories of all kinds
of different portals,
things coming out
of dimension stuff,
uh, ghost stuff that
I don't even mess with.
If you can't put a b*llet in it,
I don't wanna mess with it.
I'm basically
going home from a date.
Uh, after, you know,
s-- saying my,
"I love you," whatever.
Uh, it turned into
a frightening event for me that,
um, I'll basically
remember forever.
Came home from a date,
said my goodbyes,
noticed something
in the neighbor's yard
where they-- mm,
I wanna say 4'10",
pushing five-foot-tall fence,
maybe five?
A dog-looking creature.
The creature that I saw,
first thing that popped
in my head was a big dog.
Sort of like a-- an Anubis
'cause it had, like, the,
the head was so similar
to, like, a Great Dane,
but not boxy.
It was kind of pointed.
And the...
...like, the fur wasn't,
like, necessarily, like,
like a, like a furry dog,
you know?
There was, like,
a bunch of hairs on it.
It wasn't like, you know, like,
"I'm an Egyptian-god-looking
thing." Like, it had--
you know, it-- beefy.
The fingers were...
...Werewolves in London
comes to mind,
where you have,
like, the musculature,
like, on the fingers coming out,
and you slowly have,
like, these, like,
talon-like nails,
a little bit more pronounced
than, like, a dog-dog.
Somewhat like a--
you know, like a--
you have bodybuilder,
and you have, like, their--
the short squatty neck.
But then you have someone
that's, like, tall and lanky
and their neck's really long,
like, kind of abnormally long.
That's kind of what
it looked like.
The, the eyes...
...they were very, like,
you know, like a predator,
you're gonna see, like,
a green, a greenish hue
whenever, like,
you shine the light.
Like, you see the reflection
from the light in the back
from the streetlight
shining down through the tree,
and you see it
on its eye. It was like,
like a silverish,
like a flicker almost.
Like, i-- it's real hard
for me to describe
other than that.
Like, it's, it's very--
like... it's there.
So it was on the street,
regular paved street
neighborhood.
Um, probably...
...I'd say
maybe 30 feet from me,
where I was at t--
getting dropped off.
Um, it's in the middle of town,
which at the time,
thinking back,
and I've been thinking
about this for a long time,
it might have resulted in, uh,
something following me
from hanging out
with one of my friends.
My buddy has been haunted
by something
for a very long time.
We've gone camping with him,
and this is the only time I--
I, I ever went camping with him.
Uh, it was just an overnight
towards Albuquerque way.
The similar instances
that we ha-- that I had
from hanging out
with him, and then...
...what happened to me
make me believe
that something was...
...following him,
picked another target,
and then-- 'cause--
if it were a animal,
like a real animal,
and it was wanting
to hunt a prey,
it don't matter.
Like, y-- you take a bear,
bear is a carnivore,
they're also cannibalistic.
They're gonna come
through a window.
So, whether it was
my grandparents' belief
in their religion,
um, or, you know,
something keeping that
from coming across,
I couldn't tell you.
And then,
as the event continued,
I started noticing hands and--
that it was
more humanoid than bipedal.
Um...
...in fear, taking off
back to my house,
watching in terror
out the window,
trying to see if I can find it.
Uh, loading a g*n
just to be on the safe side
'cause I know
you can cut down a tree.
Uh--
So, the creature that I'd seen
did seem flesh and blood
to me at that point
in time in life.
S-- being there, seeing it
from about 20 feet away
to where I was at,
it seemed like
a living, breathing...
...creature of some sort.
It looked very similar
to a dog-man, a werewolf,
um, skinwalker,
whatever type of culture
you wanna call it,
that, that-- it felt real to me.
"Is it gonna eat me?"
The only nightmares I had
was something I called
the coyote-man.
Um, it showed me
things in my dreams.
I know it sounds
very kooky and crazy
and I'm not...
any of that.
Um, J.C. and a couple of people
are the only ones
I ever told this to.
But it would show me
what Farmington looked like
before it was Farmington.
Like, when it was
just cottonwoods.
It was like
the craziest dream,
it was just cottonwoods.
And then how the cottonwoods
slowly were cut down
and then the orchards
were all throughout here.
And then that was cut down,
the housing development,
it was the most bizarre thing
I've ever encountered.
It also showed me where
a fort was off the San Juan.
There's a, a fort out there
that is... supposedly a Mormon,
um, bringing captives
from the Spaniards,
which there's
a big old fight about that.
That's a whole other subject.
But other than that,
just the coyote-man.
Like, I had a similar feeling
of what that creature was
because of the silhouette,
'cause I never got to see
what it looked like
in the dream.
But the silhouette
looked very similar to it.
My name is LaVonne Sherman.
We're at the El Rancho,
um, Hotel-- Motel
in Gallup, New Mexico.
Uh, probably going back a couple
of years. It was in October.
Um, I got off work
around 10:00 p.m. at night
and there's an area up there
called Quaking Aspen,
and it's after you go
over some cattle guard.
I just went over
that cattle guard.
I was probably going about 40,
and out of the corner
of my eye I s--
on the left side,
I tr-- I just-- I saw something.
But we do have elk up there,
so I've seen them hundreds
of times up there
and th-- they're huge.
But when I looked,
this was over seven feet tall.
It looked ri-- I--
its head was turning,
all I saw was just antlers.
But then, when it stood up,
on my heart, just-- that was it.
I just was so scared.
I was-- probably never been
that scared in my life
'cause I couldn't--
I've heard of things out here,
you know, I've lived out here
all my life in New Mexico,
but I've never seen
something like that.
And as I, I got
just so frightened and scared
and I started speeding up.
I saw I clocked at 55, 60,
and it was keeping up with me.
And then I would hit 70,
and it's, it's windy
through there,
and I just-- h--
by the time I got closer
to where I would turn off,
I was at, at least, 75.
But that, whatever it was,
it would sometimes
run like a human
and then like an animal.
So it would go down on fours
and then pick itself back up.
And it did have antlers.
They did look like a--
it looked like an elf-- elk,
but it had dark brown fur.
Dark, dark, almost black fur.
And I never got a look
at its eyes or anything,
I just always saw
the side view of it,
just 'cause it was
running beside me.
And for something
to keep up with me,
and it must've ran
about four miles,
it kept up with me,
never stopped, never got tired.
And I was going 70
at some points,
and it just kept up with me.
And then, as I turned
into 191, it's a dirt road,
and then another dirt road,
and I didn't see it anymore
so I lost it up there.
But then, when I pulled in,
my mom happened to be
outside with our dogs
and I screamed at her
to get in the house,
"Something's out there."
And she was getting the dogs in,
and as they started to go in,
they went crazy
and they started barking
and they were barking
at where I came in at.
And then, we just were
real scared the rest
of the night.
And then, about eight months
after that incident,
me and my daughter were outside,
our-- our dogs just kept
barking and barking,
and we knew that coyotes
were out there,
we could hear them,
but-- so we went out
and it was probably about
ten o'clock at night again,
and probably by where
our gate is,
there's a real tall tree
out there.
And we saw something
looking back at us
and just-- we thought, you know,
just maybe even a cat
'cause it was kind of low,
but then, all of a sudden,
you could see it stand up
and it stood over
seven feet tall,
tha-- you could just
literally watch it raise up
and you could see it,
looked like a human again,
it had regular legs.
And for-- and we,
we just got so scared again
and we ran back in,
we locked the doors.
The whole night
our dogs wouldn't stop.
They were just barking
the whole night
up into the morning.
And then,
we did go out and we looked,
'cause it did rain that--
earlier in the day.
And there were prints,
there were prints
around our trailer.
The footprints that we saw
were easily at least this big.
And it looked like
it was human, human foot.
And then,
just ever since then...
without the--
throughout the years,
we've seen the same
kind of prints around the house.
Our dogs go crazy at night.
And then I started asking around
and people started telling us
that they've seen the same thing
for years up here--
up there in McGaffey.
We were-- we're Sioux,
we're from South Dakota.
So to us, um, we just
smoked ourselves off.
Um, we put cedar down
and it kind of just--
it's left us alone ever since.
We always think
of that aspect of it,
that maybe it was personally
after me, but we'll never know.
I wouldn't go outside
for a good year by myself.
Um, I do have to close at night.
Throughout all these years,
I don't look around anymore,
I just-- and everybody asks me,
"How do you do that?
How do you go home?"
'Cause al-- almost
everyone around here,
they know to not go
in McGaffey at night,
don't get out
of your car at night.
There's no cell service up there
for a good ten miles.
So when you're through there,
you're-- if something happens,
that's it.
And I never heard
of anything like it up there
up until when I started telling
my story to just coworkers
and everybody is--
they knew about it.
And I was so surprised
'cause I was like,
"Wait a minute, you know--
it's been up there?"
And they said,
"Tons of people have seen it.
Same exact thing."
I think about at least
20-something years
because I've had a coworker
that had the same incident.
We've had people down at th--
uh, l-- um, in Fort Wingate.
It's a closed school,
and they've seen it
down there too.
I don't know
what they would call
something like that, but...
around here,
they just-- there's no name.
At least the, the Navajos were--
they call it something,
but it's in Navajo
and I don't know how to say it.
But they said that it's
just something up there like--
kind of like a skinwalker,
that's what a lot
of them have said,
that that's a skinwalker.
It changes shapes and it--
and it's up there
for a reason, it's--
doesn't live up there.
They said sometimes they send
stuff like that up there.
Uh, my name is,
uh, Brenda Harris,
and I'm in, uh,
Upper Fruitland, New Mexico.
My name's, uh, Ryan Harris.
Um, we're in Upper Fruitland,
New Mexico,
near the Four Corners area.
I was born, uh, and raised as,
um, a, a Christian.
So, um, I wasn't born--
um, I wasn't raised, um,
knowing the Navajo culture.
So I was more in,
uh, learning about God
and, and stuff like that.
Um, growing up,
I did live in here.
You know, it was my, my parents
kind of growing up with it.
Um, we always had
weird instances, like,
uh, flashing--
lights flickering,
and then scratches
here and there,
footsteps in the,
the house area. So, yeah.
On our property alone,
uh, we've had a bigfoot
that comes through.
Also, we've, um...
...hear a strange noise
sometimes, uh, i--
in this house
that we're, you know, building.
Uh, our kids
would hear footsteps
or a little girl talking
or, or laughing.
Also, we've also picked up
something on camera,
which looks like a, a ghost-dog.
"Wolf-dog" is what I call it.
I started setting up
cameras after we had,
like, several footprints
that were, uh,
near the streetlight.
So my first thing was to start
setting up the camera.
We have a kitchen window
that faces towards the north,
which would be
the backyard of the house.
That was the very first thing
that we caught-- I caught,
was the, the ghost-wolf.
What makes it more--
even more interesting
is it-- you could--
on the footage, it looks like
it's, um, transparent,
but on the film,
there's parts off frame
that you can't see
in the footage.
There's a wooden shed
off camera.
And it's all wooden,
uh, rooftops.
So whatever--
um, you could hear it
when it comes into frame
that it actually, like,
sounds like dog claws
that hit the, the roof.
And it jumps into frame.
And the best reference
we could get,
we had a F-1-- was it a--
Ford pickup, F-150.
When it landed
next to that truck,
it was as tall as the truck,
the height,
same height c-- as the cab.
So it was very tall
and it was weird
'cause it ran across
or what it looks like,
it, like, floats across the,
uh, the frame
and then it just
flies up into the sky.
It's a very weird,
very weird thing.
Uh, also something
that looks like,
maybe, uh, the best
I can describe it is,
um, it looks like a juvenile,
a very young one
that seems like
it boils up from the ground.
We've picked up a--
something that looks
like a bright light.
Uh, possibly could be a UFO
that was in the back--
uh, in the backfield here.
And in that big--
uh, the bright light,
it looks like a, a figure
that starts taking
its shape, looks--
to me, I call it,
uh, like a glowing man
standing there with, like--
it looks like three,
uh, black images
standing in front of it
and on the side.
On the property
that we live alone here,
we've had-- like I said,
I mentioned that we've had
so much activity going on.
We found out that part
of our land here was, uh,
uh, we're on a burial site.
And our next door neighbors,
they're having
a lot of activity as well.
We'd come to find out
that they found out
that we are partially,
like, on a burial site
that's been-- that was here
many, many years ago.
And that's probably, uh,
the reason why we're having
so much activity here.
We're told not to talk
about the, uh, skinwalkers.
It's a-- it's like a bad taboo.
Or any kind of cryptid.
The things that I've
just mentioned,
we were told not to talk about.
The skinwalker, the gargoyles,
all that stuff that's,
that's around the area,
we're told not to talk about it.
Um, why? We've asked why.
And it just--
it's, it's a bad omen.
For instance,
if we look at a bigfoot,
like, um, it's looking at us
and we look
right straight in the eyes,
we're gonna die
within seven years.
That's what, uh, some
of the natives believe that.
Or something bad
other than dying may happen.
A sickness may come upon you.
The same way with the,
the skinwalker.
Skinwalker's a very,
very touchy subject
here on the reservation.
We get a lot of backlash,
you know, if we talk
about that subject,
it's a very touchy subject.
I'm gonna leave that
at that with that one
'cause, uh, there's so much
that goes into-- to that
that, um, I,
I was surprised.
So, yeah, we're told
not to talk about that,
especially that one.
When we were building
this house, it was just a,
like, just a skeletal part
of it, just the foundation.
And we were living
in this small trailer,
which is next to the house.
Very small trailer.
What woke me up
was we had this weird,
like, s-- um, screech noise.
Uh, I don't know what it was,
it just kind of woke me up.
And we had this-- our--
we had a husky that used
to be tied up in the back,
and I noticed she was kind of,
like, uh, panic barking,
like nervous barking.
So, I didn't really think
of any-- anything of it.
I just kind of, like,
peeked out the door, the window.
I didn't have-- I wear contacts,
so I had to do
this little thing with my eyes
to kind of get
a little bit of focus.
And I'd seen
she was looking at something,
but she was backing away
from whatever it was
at the, the length of the chain.
So she was trying to back away,
but couldn't get very far away.
So I hurried up
and put on my contacts,
but I only put on one side.
And I quickly opened
the door and I seen--
we had these sheds in the back,
and I could see something, like,
like, standing
next to where she was at.
I could see,
like, the bottom legs
was definitely, like, fur-like,
and upper torso looked like
it was just covered in fur,
but it looked like a,
like a man, like it was wearing
a costume
or something like that.
But it was tall, though,
it was as tall as the crates
that we have
sitting in the back.
It was just such a,
like, a fast moment
when I opened the door
and I saw it.
And I couldn't tell you,
like, if it had horns or not
because I just saw,
like, the silhouette
of it in the back.
The streetlight
only reaches so far.
But it was definitely
physically there
because I could hear it
jump the fence,
and you could hear that it d--
wasn't on all fours.
You could hear, definitely,
it was just, uh, bipedal.
That freaked me out. I hurried
up and closed the door, but--
'cause when I closed the door,
it-- or opened the door,
it made-- we had these,
like, blinds,
so it hit the door
and it made a noise, and it--
when it, when it did that,
I could tell
it looked towards me,
but it hurried up
and turned around
and ran towards the river,
which would be to the north.
And there's
a irrigation ditch over there.
So it leaped over
that irrigation ditch
and ran back there.
And, of course,
it's filled back there,
so we couldn't track it
all, all the way through.
There were some, uh, individuals
that were heading
toward on N 36.
Now, like my son
had mentioned earlier
that there's a NAPI,
uh, about there,
it's called NAPI
where they grow a lot of, uh--
it's an agricultural place
where they grow
a lot of crops of hay
and corn and stuff like that.
There's this little old lady.
Approaches and is asking
people for a ride.
She just said, uh,
she needed a ride up to NAPI,
which is the, uh,
Navajo Agricultural area.
Well, some workers
were heading to work
and they get
to a crosswalk, a stop.
And just as he was getting
ready to go across,
this huge-looking, like,
dog, like a ghost figure
over a huge dog,
it stood as high
as the hood of the truck,
and it ran
right in front of him.
Just took off,
like, it was gone.
So there's several people
that have seen
something like that
up in that-- up, uh--
right-- be right up here
on top of the hill here.
She had a lifted truck,
and the dog was able to,
like, on all fours,
not very far away
from the truck,
probably just a few feet away
from the truck, on all fours,
look, look at them
almost in the eye.
I did run across, um,
a family contacting me.
What she described
was a huge dog,
uh, very muscular, very tall.
She pa-- she said it stood
probably about seven,
seven-and-a-half feet tall.
She had let her sheep
out in the morning,
her and her daughter,
about seven o'clock
in the morning,
along with, um, goats and a ram.
And they had two sheep dogs.
Well, I believe it was
on a Saturday morning.
So they'd take them
down into the canyon,
and all of a sudden,
about nine o'clock
in the morning--
so the mom and the daughter
just happened to look
at the front door. It was open.
And they noticed all the sheep
was there back at the house.
They're like, "What?
What, what--" you know,
"what's going on?"
And they started counting.
That's when they noticed
that they were missing
a ram and a sheep
and one of their sheep dogs.
After they got them
back into the corral,
the mom and the daughter,
they went back down
into the canyon
and they started driving around
to see if they could find them,
and they couldn't find them.
But, well, when they got down
and they drove,
I'm not sure how far down,
there's, uh,
one area where it's flat.
When they got
to that flat surface,
that's when they noticed
the ram's head...
...was laying off to the side
along with the, the skin.
So whatever att*cked the ram
took the ram's head, ripped...
...the ram's head
along with the backbone,
threw it off to the side,
ripped the whole skin off,
off of the ram,
it's off to the side.
Now, those are laying there.
So, that spooked them.
They're like--
they thought, "Well, maybe
it was a pack of dogs."
They're like, "No, not this.
This is something else."
They go ahead and grab the,
uh, the skin and the head,
and, you know, take it back.
When they were sitting
on their truck, they were, like,
facing, I would say,
from north to south.
So they were talking
and the mom noticed...
...something move
on that mound of dirt.
Bi-- it was a big mound of dirt.
And when it moved,
she said it stood up
and it was tall.
And the color of it,
she said, "It's like
a salt and pepper color,
silver and grayish color,
with some white
and the mixture of it."
It stood up on its two legs
and it turned and it just,
like, looked at them.
So they made, like, eye contact,
and that really scared them out.
It turned around, it walked.
As it turned, it looked at them.
She said it was very tall,
very muscular in the chest.
Another one stands up beside it,
exact same color,
but a little bit smaller,
a little bit shorter.
She said that it walked--
both of them walked
around the mound
of that dirt and they were gone.
As soon as they saw that,
they-- hill top--
you know, they just
raced back home.
The ne-- but the next day,
they went back down
to that area to go retrieve the,
the skin and the head.
Well, it was gone. And what
they came back upon was the,
the skin of the, um, ram.
It looks like, um,
this thing came back
and just ate the f--
what was left on that skin,
ate all of that,
'cause the wool,
it was scattered
all over the place,
all over the ground.
That's when I went down there,
um, uh, myself and one
of my teammates went down there
and we hiked down
in this ravine there
in this wash.
And, uh, we couldn't, uh--
we never did find the dog.
They never found the dog,
they never found the sheep,
they never found the rest
of the body of the ram,
you know, any, uh,
any of those three animals,
they didn't find anything.
Well, when we walked down
into this wash,
- we finally came
across the head...
...with the backbone
still attached.
Pieces of the bones,
the jawbone,
that were down in that wash
that we came across.
We did come across a, a print,
which looks like a,
possibly a big canine print.
That's what we came across.
Now, where these things
were sitting on,
that mound,
we walked around that,
um, mound there,
and it was very sandy.
So when these things stepped,
um, it didn't leave
a good impression.
So the-- what--
we came across what looked
like the print-- footprint-like.
It looked huge, big.
In this wash,
we did find a good print,
so we took pictures of that.
Uh, we did take pictures
of the wool
and, and the head.
People in this area,
in the area that we found
these items,
uh, where this happened,
is an area called,
uh, Chaco Wash.
And that is probably about...
...maybe eight,
nine miles from here.
My name is, uh, George Harvey.
I'm from here in Farmington,
New Mexico.
We've had, uh,
like, dog-man encounters.
They've been happening
all up and down
on the reservation,
along the San Juan River.
Um, mainly on the,
on the reservation side,
where most
of the stuff happened.
There's, uh,
an encounter my cousin had, uh,
not too long ago, last year.
Him and, um, my little nephew
were walking along this road.
They-- it was,
it was in the nighttime,
just getting,
just getting night.
They were looking
up in the bushes.
They said it looked
like a sheep at first.
And as they got closer,
my, my cousin,
he said he noticed
it started, like,
to stand, like, upright.
My nephew, he, like,
got so scared, he froze.
And he couldn't walk or nothing.
He was, like, frozen in place.
My cousin remembers...
...the chest and, um, the arms.
He said the arms
were pretty long.
It had fingers,
but it had claws on it.
It had like a, like a lion,
it had like a mane,
he said that a grayish color--
how would, uh--
like a timber wolf almost,
like a dark grayish color.
It started running.
It, it, it started, like,
getting toward the road,
where they were at.
And my nephew, he was,
like, still in shock,
and he-- they,
they ran the other way,
down the-- back toward the--
where they were coming from.
And, um, they, they went
and jumped into
the irrigation ditch to hide.
They heard that,
uh, that thing start
running on the road.
I guess it was looking for them.
And he can hear it
running by, like--
and there's things
that you hear, like... sniffing,
like trying to smell
for them or something.
They said it ran by
a couple of times,
they can hear it.
A vehicle happened to come by,
and, uh, whatever.
It, it ran away from the vehicle
'cause of the headlights.
After that vehicle passed,
my nephew and my cousin
jumped out of the ditch road,
or jumped
out of the irrigation ditch,
and they started running
back towards his house.
That evening,
my cousin said, uh, the dogs,
all in that whole area,
in that neighborhood area,
they were, um,
whining and whimpering
most of the night.
He heard a scratching
on his, uh, trailer
below his window, like--
I guess, that followed them.
I'm not sure.
But the-- it knew
where he was at
and it knew exactly
which room he was in
because there was scratches
on the window.
There's, there's
other encounters
that happened on the reservation
with, uh, a lot
of the other people, they--
most people don't come out
and talk to-- talk about it.
It's, it's, uh, taboo.
Most people con-- uh,
consider the dog-man
more like a-- how to say--
in our culture,
the Navajo skinwalker.
That's, like,
witchcraft. That's...
...that's, that's scary.
Running into those.
My dad, being a medicine man,
as I was growing up,
in my younger years,
they used to...
...come around
his house at night.
In the summertime,
it-- it'd be real hot.
So the top of the hogan, the--
where the stovepipe was,
we'd usually leave it open,
and there's a--
we'd put like a screen
and, uh, pull it down
with bricks and stuff.
At night, sometimes I would,
would spend the weekend
with my dad,
and he lived
real close to a, a bluff,
and his hogan is right below it.
You hear, um,
bone whistles, like--
they, they'd use eel bones
and whistle-- to make a whistle.
And you'd hear that at night
coming from the bluffs.
That's when you'd know
there was a...
...skinwalker who'd come down.
When they're around you,
you get this, like, fear,
you can, like, sense it, it,
it does something to you.
It paralyzes you.
And so, when I was
at my dad's house,
i-- as I was sitting there,
you'd hear
those whistles at night,
and, uh, just that...
...sense of fear,
it'd come over us
at night. And...
...my dad just be,
"Oh, leave it alone.
Just go to sleep.
They're, they're not gonna
come inside the house." And--
Well, one night...
they did come into the house.
I was, uh, I was
sleeping on the floor
and I kept hearing the--
someone walking around
outside his hogan.
It sounded like, um,
like a dog trying to,
I guess, like,
hop up on, on the window,
look in the window.
And you hear scratching.
All of a sudden, you heard--
I heard a, like,
a thud on the roof
and you can actually hear
someone walking...
...on top of the roof. And--
I was looking up at that--
the chimney hole.
I knew it was up there.
And sure enough, I looked up
and, uh, I saw
a head peek, peek over,
and that had dog ears on it too.
And it, it, it,
like, freaked me out.
And I-- I was trying to yell
for my dad to wake up,
but I, I, I couldn't speak.
Like, my words would come out
and be like a mumble.
I was trying to yell.
I was laying there and...
...the only thing I could do
was just close my eyes and...
...oh, like my hands
started shaking, my body--
It dropped into the house
and was walking.
It was bipedal.
How, how I'd seen it was, uh--
what I'd seen,
the dog ears and everything.
And when I looked
at it, running out,
what I'd seen running out...
...it was a-- yeah,
it was a guy, he was naked,
but he was painted.
And he had a...
...a coyote skin, like a hood.
It was tied off to his back.
My dad, he woke up then.
I just heard him
cussing around and--
I heard a...
I heard the door open up,
open up and closed.
And then that's
when I could move.
And, uh...
...my dad was telling me...
...that, uh,
that he had kind of--
It was trying to do
something to the family.
And, um...
...that's why it came
inside the house. But...
...lu-- luckily I, I was awake,
and it-- and warned enough to...
...to kind of leave us alone.
My dad-- when my dad woke up,
it, it ran out. It just-- out.
He showed me--
he had-- uh, in his hand--
I guess when he was
struggling with it,
he grabbed a piece
of the hair, and--
he had long,
long hair in his hand still.
He had to take it off and...
...he went and put it
in the fire.
But when, when,
when Dad always talk about
the skinwalkers and stuff,
it had a deep effect on people.
I, I know it's, you know,
it, it's scary. It,
it stays with you forever.
And, um,
just memories
and stuff like that.
Suddenly, you back--
you get-- like, the fear
of it coming back sometimes.
It's, it's just a fear
you know, you know.
It's like the boogeyman or,
or something, you know.
I don't, I don't wanna see
the other side of... evil.
I don't know
what that is out there.
I don't know if it was
made from evil or not,
but usually somebody's dabbling
somewhere they shouldn't.
I think they're more...
...leaning towards, like,
paranormal, maybe witchcraftery.
Like-- that's my opinion on it.
I haven't really...
...gotten any enough, like,
hard evidence to back that up.
It's just my opinion.
I think they're both,
uh, I mean,
it's my personal opinion,
is both, uh, paranormal and,
and flesh. A lot
of people think it's, uh,
a spiritual thing.
If it's flesh and blood,
then we should be able
to see it run off.
We could follow
their tracks when they stop.
Did they disappear?
Did they fly off?
Did they boil back there,
back into the ground?
So that's why I say it--
I think it is both,
All this goes back
to how I was taught
with our whole creation story.
It was brought to us by a,
by a trickster, the coyote.
Hmm, he taught human people
how to use, uh,
the animal skin and stuff,
to, to run fast. And...
...as we see it,
it comes in different forms.
It'd be a werewolf or,
like-- it's somebody
wearing a dog skin,
using that, that evil,
evil black magic.
I, I wouldn't go outside
at night very often
and didn't, like--
I met a man named J.C. Johnson
and, like, he kind of gave me
more courage
to go explore this stuff.
Like, you know,
once you see something,
you're like, "I wanna--"
like, it's like a--
like a wreck
on the side of the road.
No matter how much
you don't wanna look,
you're gonna want
to look right at it.
So you go on venturing
more and more and more.
I mean, it'll ta--
it'll take you...
...hours and miles
and miles away
from where you normally live
just to get more information
or have a similar experience
so you can know,
"I'm not crazy."
Like, "This r-- is real."
Skinwalkers, The: American Werewolves 2 (2023)
Moderator: Maskath3