Skinwalkers and the Navajo Nation

Tonight, we’re heading deep into the Navajo Nation, into a landscape where silence has weight, shadows have memory, and stories don’t say stories for long.
Out here, the line between human and inhuman is thinner than anyone outside the Da world could ever understand. And once you cross that line, you don’t come back unchanged. If you’re a fan of horror or the paranormal, you’ve definitely heard of them. The Ye Nablushi or the Yinadushi, skin walkers, figures that move like animals but think like people, witches who broke ancient taboos that now walk the night in borrowed shapes. We’ll look at documented cases from retired Navajo Ranger Jonathan Dover and current Navajo Ranger Shan Clung. Real investigations, real evidence, and encounters that seasoned law enforcement officers still refuse to talk about after sunset. We’ll also step into the infamous Shadows of Skinwalker Ranch, where witnesses, scientists, ranchers, and federal contractors have all reported creatures that shouldn’t exist, voices calling from nowhere, things that walk on two legs and four, and lights in the sky that seem to hunt the ground below. This isn’t an episode about legends and stories like these. It isn’t about what you see that’s necessarily so dangerous.
It’s what sees you. I’m Monty Mater.
>> I’m Andy Jones.
>> And this is Skin Walkers on Highway to Hell.
And we’re back.
>> Hello.
>> And we’re back.
>> Hello.
>> I I don’t know what it is and I apologize in advance to everyone listening. I cannot speak today.
>> Me either. Don’t worry about it.
>> I’m so mushmouthed.
>> Dude, I turned into a mushmouth [ __ ] today.
>> What is going on?
>> It’s insane. It’s the weather. It’s It’s got to be something because we’ve had a lot of like it’s 65 degrees during the day and then it’s 31 at night and then it’ll be cold for two days and then it’s hot for two days and it’s been >> you know Tennessee god.
>> Uh a couple quick announcements. I’ve gotten some requests on my flipping tables Patreon looking for the Highway to Hell Patreon. It is now live. Uh patreon.com/highway to hell podcast.
That’s where you’re going to get all of these episodes adree forever. Any of the bonus content for travel you’re going to get there. We’re also going to do a monthly live where we come on and either do a live episode or we just chat about hauntings, paranormal stories, maybe things we’ve experienced. Um, so you can sign up there for just $5 a month to be a Helien officially an official Helen.
>> Thank you everybody.
>> Yeah, thank you so much for that. We are also designing really cool Highway to Hell merch.
>> So that’ll be there first. You’re going to get a discount code um if you’re subscribed to the Patreon. also get earliest access before those links go live uh kind of in the in the bigger world if you will. Um and a huge thank you to all of you. Uh we are now monetized officially as a podcast thanks to you you following and sharing and subscribing and that is awesome. We are there’s a bunch of really cool people showing up and I’m getting emails about oh my gosh you have to cover this story.
Please send us stories and um if we ever share a story that you relate to. So we’re talking about skinwalkers today.
If you’re like, listen, I, you know, I’m Native American or or I was in a situation where I encountered this, please send us those stories. We would love to share that real person stories on the podcast. Um, >> and maybe that’s something we could even do with the Patreon kind of Q&A kind of thing, live submit stories and and talk about like live hauntings. Um, read people’s stories. Maybe do kind of a a spooky live where we just read terrifying stories.
>> I’m all about that >> to each other, which would be really fun. Maybe get some classics in there and get some some uh fan submitted ones.
I have some too that I would share.
>> Yeah, absolutely.
>> I’ve got some some scary stuff.
>> I see some scary stuff on Lower Broadway when we play gigs, too. If you guys want to hear that, let us know.
>> Every time.
>> And also, again, just as a reminder, please continue to follow us on Instagram, Highway to Hell Pod. We’re going to start doing some modern crime takes on there, as well as sharing photos from these episodes. And uh we’re planning some travel to kind of easy to reach places from where we’re at in Nashville where you’ll get some bonus lives of what we’re seeing, pictures, video, and all of that B-roll bonus content is going to be on Patreon as well.
>> Fun times.
>> Fun times.
>> I’ll be better about uploading stuff too, guys.
>> But for those of you Yeah, for those of you that were looking for the Patreon page, it wasn’t up yet. We were just having some technical issues with Patreon. You have to have a separate login per page, and it was just it’s been an adventure. I appreciate them keeping our platform secure.
>> Oh, absolutely.
>> Jesus, I really did think I was going to have to give a kidney >> to get that to >> some some sort of blood sample.
>> Right. Exactly. Maybe a blood oath, sell my soul.
>> Uh so today, what we’re going to do is we’re going to talk about skinwalkers.
We’re going to talk about the history of the Navajo Nation first. um because skinwalkers are specific to the Navajo Nation and we’re going to talk about stories from rangers who have worked on the nation as well as uh other paranormal encounters that people have had. This is one of my favorite cryptids.
>> Same.
>> They are so fascinating to me.
>> Before we get into this, what was the first kind of crypted thing that you heard >> that I remember hearing about?
>> I think I think Bigfoot was the first like thing that I remember anybody ever talking about >> and having a debate about. Um, you know, cuz like there was like that that period of time where it’s all the Bigfoot sightings and the weird grainy. It’s the worst photo you’ve ever seen in your life, right?
>> No, never. God forbid it it it’s clear and you could see like, oh, there’s Bigfoot walking away. You could see his wrist watch of the guy wearing the costume, >> right? He’s just a big dude, you know?
Um, but I will say that my my kind of interest in like creatures of the night cryptids >> started a lot a long time before I heard of Bigfoot. So growing up on the ranch in Wyoming, we had a period of time where we had a mountain lion.
>> Wow.
>> That was like a problem. And so we had, you know, dad sat us down as a family.
He’s like, “Hey, there’s a mountain lion around. So if you’re out at night, you got to keep your eyes up, you know, take a 22 with you.” >> You know, and taught us how to handle it if we encountered this mountain lion.
>> And one time we were driving home.
>> And I I don’t remember where we were coming from, but it was dark, right?
>> And I don’t know what it was, but a very large tan animal. jumped over the hood of the car, like essentially hit the windshield and ran. And we were never able to confirm what it was, but but the thought was like that mountain lion was right there cuz it was way too big to be a deer and it just wasn’t the right shape.
>> Sure.
>> Um, so that was kind of the first time, you know, my brain started thinking about, well, what if there’s like animals that aren’t animals? And I was already scared of the dark. I was a little kid. Still scared of the dark.
>> I was already scared. I saw Jumanji like oh my god. So that was but that was the first time I kind of developed an interest in like what if it’s not an animal but what if it’s not a person.
>> Yeah, I I totally get that as as well.
And plus mountain lines can make some weird noises.
>> Any of those animals can make really strange noises at night. I I know for me, like you said, Bigfoot I think was probably the first thing I heard, but um I think the one that got me into all of this kind of crypted world was probably Moth Man. Yeah, >> that one’s always it’s always been bizarre and fascinating to me and that just you know me it’s like a snowball.
So it’s like oh my god then that probably led me into more of this world of you know at the time probably skinw walkers what they you know basically what they definitely weren’t cuz it seems like I didn’t know until started researching this that they were >> kind of just stuck on the Navajo land >> specific to Navajo Nation >> and we I mean we’ll get into all that.
I’m not trying to jump ahead. But I was just curious to see what got you into this world.
>> Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was definitely the the mountain line incident. But but I but Bigfoot was the one I remember >> hearing first. Um and then you know you you hear like more like fantastical like animal hybrids >> that people would talk about.
>> Chupacabra.
>> Yeah. Things like that. Um but I think as far as cryptids as a whole, I I will say like knowing that cryptids is an entity kind of exist. A moth man was my first one too.
>> That’s just a weird one, man. So weird and just everything that happened. We’ll do an episode on that, too. That’s actually close enough that we can drive up.
>> Yeah.
>> In a day.
>> Yeah.
>> Then like do a weekend.
>> Yeah. That little bit ways away, but we can make that work.
>> We can make it work.
>> We’ll have to do a Moth Man episode. I mean, there’s so much stuff. Did you see the uh picture of the Moth Man sighting in Chicago?
>> I did.
>> Weird. Anyway, I digress. That’s for another day.
>> All right, let’s get to Skinwalkers.
These ones are my favorite in part because they’re genuinely so terrifying.
like this is a premise and the stories that people tell about them truly truly nightmare >> fodder uh evil.
>> Yes, very evil. And we’ll get into why.
If you’re not familiar with how a skinwalker forms, you’ll get into why they’re so bad.
>> So, before I jump into this, I just want to say really quickly, I’m going to do my best with pronunciations. I tried to listen to native speakers say these words, write out pronunciation guides.
Um, but if I get them wrong, I apologize. Going to do my best. The Navajo Nation, known to its people as Da Beaya, the land of the Da, is the largest Native American nation in both land area and population in the United States. It stretches across portions of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Governed through a sovereign tribal system with its own courts, legislature, and executive branch, the Navajo Nation is both a modern political entity, and the living continuation of a people whose origins, culture, and stories long predates the United States itself. Its formation occurred over centuries of migration, some of it forced, adaptation, resistance, and resilience.
The Da trace their origins through a complex sacred narrative that describes their emergence into this world from earlier worlds, guided by a holy people who taught them how to live in harmony through the principle of balance, beauty, and order. These origins are not treated as a metaphor, but as the foundational truth of the Daen people and how they came to be.
Archaeologically and linguistically, scholars identify the Navajo as part of a larger Aabaskcan language family with ancestral groups migrating from the subarctic regions of Canada and Alaska centuries before European contact. By the 1400s, Aabaskan speaking peoples had reached the southwest where they encountered established PBLO societies.
Through both peaceful exchange and cultural interaction, they adopted techniques such as weaving, farming, pottery, and blended indigenous southwestern knowledge with their own traditions. By the 15 and 1600s, the Da had developed a distinct cultural identity. Pastoralists and farmers who herded sheep and goats, lived in Hogan’s honored sacred mountains as the boundaries of their world, and developed rich ceremonial traditions, including blessing way and enemy way. Their land base was vast, but their political structure remained decentralized. It was families, clans, headmen formed the back me backbone of social organization, not a single centralized government. Spanish colonizers arrived in the 16th century, bringing sheep, horses, and devastating epidemics. The DA adopted sheep hurting rapidly, building an economy and cultural identity around churo sheep that remains important today. They also resisted Spanish attempts at subjugation, raiding missions, and settlements in response to slave raids, forced conversions, and violent reprisals. Relations with the Spanish and later the Mexicans oscillated between trade and conflict, with neither empire able to conquer the Navajo. US expansion in the 19th century brought new pressure. After the Mexican-American War in 1848, the US inherited centuries of unresolved conflict. The American military viewed the Da as an obstacle to Western settlement, and they were prepared to take on that obstacle violently as they had against indigenous people in the East. In 1863, forced removal became federal policy under the direction of Brigadier General James H.
Carlton and Kit Carson, who led a brutal scorched earth campaign. Crops were burned, sheep slaughtered, homes destroyed, water sources poisoned, and families were captured. This campaign culminated in what was called the Long Walk, one of the most traumatic events in Navajo history. Between 1864 and 1866, roughly 8,500 Da men, women, and children were forced to walk hundreds of miles from their homeland in present day Arizona and New Mexico to the prison camp of Bos Reinando to the prison camp of Bosraondo at Fort Sumar. Ordered by General James H.
Carlton and carried out primarily by Kit Carlson. The campaign aimed to break Navajo resistance, open the land to Anglo settlement, and impose US control through war tactics. Carlton’s strategy targeted civilian survival rather than military defeat. Troops destroyed Hogans, burned orchards and fields, captured livestock, and diverted poisoned water sources. Diverted or poisoned water sources. Starvation conditions spread through the Dinata, forcing many families to surrender or starve. Those who did not were hunted through canyon systems, including the scorched earth assault on the canyon de Chile in the winter of 1864. Elders, women, and children hiding inside the canyons were killed or captured, and the sacred sites were violated. Again, between 8,000 and 9,000 people were forced on several marches, some more than 400 miles to that prison camp. The marches were conducted under armed guard with little food or water, exposure to freezing winter nights, and constant violence. Pregnant women, infants, and the elderly suffered the most. Estimates vary, but hundreds died along the way from exhaustion, disease, and execution for falling behind or just general assault. Survivors remembered soldiers shooting those who stopped to rest, and children who became too weak to continue walking were left along the trail to die. Bosondo itself became another sight of destruction. The reservation had poor soil, brackish water, insufficient rations. Crop failures were constant and disease, especially dysentery, small pox, and the measles spread through the overcrowded camp. The government failed to deliver adequate supplies, leaving many to starve. The environment prevented traditional Navajo practices of hering, weaving, and farming, undermining their cultural and economic survival. They could not work in a way that kept their system alive. The captive messo Apache, also in prison there, were historical enemies of the Navajo, heightening conflict and instability. By 1868, the reservation was widely recognized as a humanitarian disaster and political failure. Navajo leaders including Barnosito and Malmoito negotiated the US officials and secured a treaty allowing them to return to a portion of their homeland. This return still under federal surveillance surveillance and limited land rights did not erase the scale of loss. Families had been separated, traditional lifeways completely disrupted. The population severely weakened by death, hunger, and disease. Collective memory preserve stories of frozen feet, missing relatives, and children that were buried along the trail. The long walk remains one of the most devastating episodes in US indigenous history. It exemplified a federal policy of forced assimilation, territorial seizure, starvation, and ethnic coercion. Its legacy endures in Navajo oral histories and in the intergenerational trauma carried by descendants who survived a march that was designed to break a people but instead underscored their endurance.
After four years of suffering, the failure of Bos Gordono became undeniable even to US officials. The result was the treaty of 1868. I mentioned earlier that was the landmark agreement that ended the internment and established a reservation for the Navajo people. This treaty is the legal foundation of what now exists as the Navajo Nation. It guaranteed the right to return to ancestral lands, federal recognition as a sovereign tribal nation, protection from further force removal, access to livestock, seeds, and tools to rebuild their economies, and a commitment to future peace between the Navajo and the United States. Although the initial re the reservation initially spanned only part of the original homeland, it created a framework through which the Navajo leaders could negotiate for expansions. Over the next century, the Navajo Nation grew through ex through executive orders, land purchases, and congressional actions, eventually reaching more than 27,000 square miles.
While the DA traditionally governed through local clan-based leadership, the 20th century brought external pressure to adopt a centralized political structure. In 1923, following the discovery of oil on Navajo land, here we go. Uh >> oh.
>> The United States insisted on a formal governing body to negotiate mineral leasing, because of course they did.
This led to the creation of the Navajo Tribal Council, the precursor to what is now today’s government. Over time, the nation developed one of the most complex and robust tribal governments in the United States that features a three branch system, executive, legislative, and judicial. the Navajo Nation President and Vice President, a 24 member Navajo Nation Council, local governance through 110 chapter house houses, and the Navajo Supreme Court.
This self-government is grounded in treaty rights and reaffirmed by federal law, giving the Navajo Nation substantial authority over natural resources, law enforcement, schools, and judicial matters. The nation remains a center of cultural strength. the language which is one of the most spoken indigenous language in North America, survived boarding schools and suppression where they would actually come in and kidnap native students, cut their hair, which is a spiritual significance to them, forced them into white schools, forced them to only speak English, beat them if they didn’t speak English. However, that language has been preserved and it survived that.
>> God, >> and it’s gained national recognition when Navajo soldiers used it as an unbreakable military code during World War II, the Navajo code talkers. Mhm.
>> The nation is also known for worldrenowned weaving and silver smithing, traditional healing ceremonies, which we’ll talk a little bit later in the kind of the spiritual medicine, rich oral traditions, sacred sites such as the four sacred mountains, deep philosophical frameworks rooted in harmony and balance. And today the nation faces, you know, modern challenges. Everyone’s kind of facing resource extraction debates, especially with the United States federal government, water rights struggles, economic equality, but it continues to assert sovereignty, maintain cultural continuity, and preserve its spiritual traditions. Skinwalkers are among the most misunderstood figures in the indigenous North American tradition. Pop culture portrayals often reduce them to horror tropes or cryptidlike creatures.
They are technically classified as cryptids, but their actual meaning within the Navajo cosmology is far more complex and very culturally bounded. In the traditional belief, skinwalkers are not monsters or supernatural beasts, but they’re human practitioners of a very specific, highly taboo form of Navajo witchcraft. Their origin lies in a worldview that is shaped by ceremonial knowledge, moral boundaries, and the sanctity of community relationships, and the Navajo ideal of hutzo, which is emphasizing harmony, beauty, and right living. This comes from animistic practices and and religions that are based on animism, which we’ll get into in a second. The concept emerges from long-standing Navajo distinction between sacred healing practices and malevolent misuse of spiritual power. While certain ceremonial figures and holy people in creation stories can temporarily take animal form for sacred reasons, skinw walkers represent an inversion of these traditions. And I’m going to put a Lord of the Rings comment in here.
>> Go for it.
>> It’s it’s how uh uh Morgoth and Saurin took elves and transformed them into orcs. It is a distortion.
>> Oh yeah. Yeah.
>> Of the being. Okay.
>> It’s a distortion. It’s not the correct part. So they do cuz in their their early legends of holy people, they did have these holy people who kind of created the da people who could transform into animals.
>> Exactly.
>> This is not the same shaman. Yes. That’s kind of the the precursor to their to their shaman and their religious leaders.
>> And when I was looking at this also, it seemed like um it was a process that took a long time.
>> A long time. A series of decisions >> for for these shaman to learn how to shapeshift. But according to the lore of the Navajo, um there was a certain group of people that wanted to do it faster and then that’s when the evil, you know, we don’t know what that is, but the the darkness, the evil entered in. And I will say trying to find some of this information can be tough because it’s very guarded.
>> Yes. And they don’t they don’t talk about it publicly. We’ll get into that as well, but it’s very kind of, you know, you’ll even if you do watch, so some of the rangers that we talk about today, if you go watch their stories on YouTube or read their books, they won’t even name it. You’ll know what they’re talking about, but but culturally, they won’t name it, which is because they believe that naming is calling it in.
>> Exactly. And and even on uh Sean Clint’s channel, which we’ll talk about him, um you know, he was there’s been a couple moments where he was going to upload videos telling stories, but the tribal elders were like, “You can’t tell that one.” Yep.
>> You could tell this one. That’s okay.
But there they have to approve the stories of these tribal guarded thing.
>> So when we’re talking about skin walkers and you know in contrast to these holy people who were able to to trans like transfer into animals or change into animals when they needed to skinwalkers embody a deliberate violation of spiritual law using specialized knowledge to cause harm rather than healing or restoring balance. This type of morality is better understood by having an understanding of animistic religions which I mentioned before because this is what this is descended from. Animistic religion is one of the oldest and widespread forms of religious worldview. When we look at religious history, this is really where all religion comes from. The earliest concepts of un like that we see of humans beginning to have an understanding of spirituality come from come in the form of animism. The core characteristic of this belief system is that the world is alive with spirits, agency and personhood. That humans share the environment with other beings who possess consciousness, intention and the ability to interact with human life.
These beings may inhabit animals, plants, features of the landscape, celestial bodies, weather patterns, or objects used in daily life. Animism does not separate the physical and the spiritual realms. Instead, it understands them as intertwined together. The natural world is not inert, but relational, and humans must live in responsible and reciprocal relationship with other beings who inhabit it. ’90s kids paint with all the colors of the wind from Pocahontas.
It’s that.
Yeah, it’s that. It’s that. But I know every rock and tree and creature has a life, has a spirit, has a name. That’s animism.
>> There you go.
>> The central feature of animistic religions, which I love, is relationality. Humans, animals, ancestors, and spirits exist within a network of mutual obligation. Your job is to care for the world around you as it cares for you. It’s such a beautiful I think beautiful form of spirituality and kind of like I think captures the essence of what spirituality should be.
>> I I totally agree with The the objective is I make the world better than when I got here >> and I care for the world around me. Both in like taking stewardship of my environment, but also treating other humans and other beings with care and respect. I think it’s beautiful.
>> Respect offerings, careful speech, ritual behaviors, maintain good relationships with the other than human persons who share the world. Because these beings have agency, they must be approached ethically. Hunting, harvesting, building or altering the landscape typically involves rituals or acknowledgements meant to maintain balance and avoid offending the spirits of animals, plants or natural elements.
And we see a lot of this. You see this in a hunting rituals in Nordic tribes and Celtic tribes as well. They would often if they were hunting and they they get their kill, they offer a prayer and a ceremony to honor the spirit of the animal, honor its sacrifice because they they have to have it to eat.
>> Yeah.
>> But there’s also this respect around it.
>> Exactly. They use every part. every part of it.
>> Every part of it. Unlike >> I can’t stand trophy hunting.
>> I was watching a uh documentary with my girlfriend and there was a you know some dentist. He end up murdering his wife, but he was a big time big game hunter.
Had, you know, trophies all over his house. Like, oh, tough guy. You’re big big tough guy.
>> When I hear of a trophy hunter or a poacher getting getting eaten, I’m not sad.
>> Oh, I clap.
>> I clap.
>> I’m not sad. But animistic religions also emphasize continuity between the living and the dead. Ancestors remain present and very influential, capable of being a spirit guide, protecting or warning the living. Ritual offerings, morning practices, memorial traditions are ways of preserving proper relationships across generations. The boundary between life and death is permeable, not absolute. Another defining characteristic and the importance of ritual specialists such as shamans, healers, and spirit mediums.
Because they believe these worlds exist at the same time. These individuals are trained to navigate the spiritual world, diagnose causes of illness or misfortune, communicate with spirits, restore harmony. Illness, conflict, or environmental imbalance is often understood as a relational disharmony within the community. And animistic religions also tend to have localized or placebased cosmologies. Mountains, rivers, particular groves, specific animals become symbols that are representative of divine beings for that region. sacred geography structures, life, seasoned rituals, migration patterns, and social organization. And finally, animistic religions often operate on a principle of moral ecology.
To live well is to live in balance with the beings around you. Harm, greed, disrespect create spiritual consequences, while generosity, restraint, and proper ritual create well-being. Ethics are ecological. Every every single action has a relational impact. And there’s actually so whenever I’m working and I I want to have the TV on just so I can hear it but I don’t want to watch it, I put on Forensic Files.
>> Oh yeah. Yes. Perfect. And there’s a story in forensic files and I don’t remember what season it is where they had these sudden deaths of of young Navajos in particular and it started with this couple who died within like very short time frame of each other >> and they couldn’t figure out what was going on and it was specifically um affecting the nation but it was actually the shamans >> who pointed out an ecological imbalance with mice that ended up leading them to realize that the mice were carrying this bacteria that was causing the problem.
But it was the shamans who said it’s because we had this wet season and it causes this. Like the shamans were able to lead scientists in the CDC to the answer of those deaths. That’s amazing.
>> It’s just incredible. Just incredible.
>> And it’s it’s amazing how they know things like that.
>> So the Navajo term for skin walkers ye nushi translates loosely to as with it he goes on all fours reflecting the association between the practitioner and the animal form that they adopt in their harmful acts. The English word skinwalker developed later, influenced by early anthropologists who noted the use of animal skins in these practices.
Transformation itself is neither mysterious nor monstrous within Navajo thought. It is instead tied to specific ceremonial motifs where mass dancers or singers embody the holy being. So there’s a separation between the practices of the nation that are actually doing these dances and these really intricate ceremonies with like using animal skin, right? They’re they’re enjoying the holy beings. the skinwalker was white people observing this and being like skinwalker that’s what we’re going to call it not the same but it did end up becoming used for the the witchcraft practitioners so these dancing practices celebrating the holy beings are sacred strictly regulated and central to restoring balance however skinwalker witchcraft corrupts these elements by using transformation for violence intimidation or psychological and spiritual damage traditional accounts hold that individuals become a skinwalker only after committing profound violations of cultural law. Their role is sacred as a shaman. They’re they’re supposed to steward stories, ceremonies, intricate cosmology. They’re supposed to lead these beautiful dances celebrating the holy beings. And when a shaman decides to violate that, they must break the deepest taboos and betray their training and weaponize their spiritual knowledge.
>> And the main way when I was researching this of how they become skin walkers is you they have to kill a loved one.
>> Yeah. whether it’s your wife, your kids, your mom, your dad, just someone you love and that crosses that boundary on and that puts them on their path to becoming >> Yeah. And it can also be cuz in some of the some of the reading that I did, it it can also be like accumulation of just >> the most evil acts like rape, incest, murder, but they have to they have to make these conscious decisions over time to create the ability to make to to shapeshift this way.
>> Exactly. Um, and it it is it’s it’s really truly I think it is this great picture of just like a poisoning and a distortion of what their belief system actually is and this beautiful balance and harmony. These beautiful holy beings who can turn into animals when they need to turning it into this this gross perverted evil and like changing into an animal to be able to do harm.
>> Right. Exactly.
>> Is really the big change.
>> Exactly. And and again, these these acts that they have to commit in order to make this change range from murder to incest to dec desecration of the dead.
They represent a total departure from the community ethic. Power in Navajo cosmology is morally neutral. What makes a skinwalker dangerous is that they choose to channel this knowledge and their ritual skill towards harm. Like many belief systems, Navajo witchcraft traditions shift in relation to historical pressures. The fear of skinwalkers intensified during periods of extreme upheaval. The colonial era brought devastating disruption through warfare, enslavement, epidemics and displacement. Slave raids by Spanish and Mexican forces and the introduction of epidemic diseases and early US military campaigns destabilize traditional lifeways their economy during times of scarcity and trauma. Their beliefs often often sharpened as communities search for ways to interpret suffering. And I think we all do that. I think you see like this we we we reach for the divine when we’re surrounded by pain and suffering and we’re trying to understand. And that’s such a that’s such a normal human experience. And we see that in the the nation and the and the Navajo’s kind of history of these stories kind of seem to surge in periods of of pain and and distrust.
Uh some historical accounts document that accused witches were often executed by fellow Navajo prisoners during times of desperate years. Again, and same thing, we kind of reach out and we look for a group to demonize or we look for someone who’s betrayed us who’s supposed to be our religious leader. Again, that’s globally. So, skinwalkers became this symbol not only of spiritual danger, but also of communal vulnerability in the face of external violence and deprivation. So, there are rules around skinwalkers. They they’re they’re they have parameters. They’re strict. They’re deeply embedded in Navajo custom. First is that skinwalkers are always human. They’re they’re an actual human. They’re not a creature or an animal who achieves this. It has to be a human practitioner that does it.
The transformations are not permanent or a biological change. It’s a ritual skill illusion. It’s temporary.
>> They control it.
>> Yes. And it makes the practitioner appear or move like an animal for a period of time.
>> Obtaining this power requires again violating these sacred laws. And while popular depictions focus on wearing animal skins, again, wearing the animal skin is the sacred dances for the holy people. In these contexts, the practitioner becomes the animal, >> right? And they become the animal by having certain pelts. They have to have a If they want to be a coyote, they have to, you know, if they want to be a coyote, they have to have a coyote pelt.
If they want to be an owl, they have to have an owl pelt. Like you they have to >> have that to transform.
>> Yeah. So it’s it’s the depiction focus on wearing animal skins. It’s usually wolves, coyotes, foxes, or owls. And the skins are tools. You can think of it as kind of a a magic device, a magic tool.
The practitioner’s power comes from corruption, not the clothing. So there it’s their power. It’s just part of the ritual. But again, just to make the distinction, when when you see like ceremonial dances that involve animal skin, that’s not it. This is the the deviant practice, if you will.
>> The purpose of skinwalker activity is always harmful. They are engaging in creating illness, inducing fear, sabotaging family, committing violence, attacking individuals during the night.
There is never good intention. Uh their power undermines again that that harmony essential to this belief system. And traditional markers used to identify skinwalkers include unnatural movement, animallike eyes in a human form, knowledge of their victim’s personal details they shouldn’t know, unusual speed or agility, and speaking openly about skinwalkers is taboo within Navajo communities. In order to share these stories, it has to be approved by the tribal council.
>> You just yeah, can’t do that.
>> Um because these conversations may draw unwanted spiritual attention, disrespect ceremonial boundaries, or transmit dangerous knowledge without context. And they are also much of the lore that you’ll look at skinwalkers are bound to the land in the Navajo Nation through Skinwalkers. I wanted to touch on also and that has to do something with the four sacred mountains. They’re not allowed to leave the the Navajo land.
And >> that brings us to a lot of stuff like you know Tik Tok, Instagram. Oh look, there’s a skinw walker in my backyard or oh there’s a thing. No, dude. That’s your uncle. He’s had too much to drink.
Get him inside. But like you see like these weird videos. It’s like automatically it’s just oh it’s a skinwalker. No.
>> Yeah. And that’s not to say that like obviously you know all across the world there’s all kinds of weird things you know but if you see something of like oh there’s a skinwalker in Peru that’s not a skinwalker. It may be a crypted >> of some form but it’s not a skinwalker.
>> Right. And and also I think another confusion um people have also with skinwalkers is comparing them to wendigos.
>> Yes. Very different.
>> And the main thing is wendigos have to they cannibalize. And that was one thing before I started researching this also is I thought they were one and the same.
Just maybe like oh the skinwalkers the Navajo name and the windo is something else, you know, but it’s the same entity. It’s not.
>> Yeah, it’s very different.
>> And honestly, I didn’t realize too that skinwalkers were still human.
>> Yes.
>> I thought they were like a crypted or a creature or something like that.
>> They um they really just operate at night. And from when I was researching this, if the morning sun, the dawn sun hits them and they’re in that form, they’re stuck in that form. So, they need to get back to wherever they >> like a vampire. Got to get back to your coffee.
>> Exactly. Yeah, I would know about that.
>> But yeah, they’re they operate at night.
And in many accounts, they travel with unnatural speed. They appear like suddenly or silently. They move in ways that like it looks like an animal, but they they’re always described as being it’s wrong, too tall, too fast, movements that don’t match a normal animals movement. They often take the form again of coyotes, wolves, foxes, owls, other other animals associated with taboo uh power. I’ve also heard a lot of depictions of them as as deer >> like observing.
>> Yeah.
>> Um but these appearances are not again literal shape-shifting. They can be illusions, disguises, ritual manipulation. like you see it that way, but they are human.
>> Um, in many traditional stories, they watch houses from a distance, circle livestock, pens, lurk near windows, and use terror as a form of influence.
They’re also associated with spreading illness and disease among the community.
So, they traditional Navajo beliefs describe several forms of harmful magic, including the use of corpse powder, which is made from the ashes of the dead and other taboo materials to induce sickness, weakness, or disorientation.
The skinwalker might blow powder toward a victim, leave it on any belongings, or scatter it in a doorway. They sabotage property, leave cursed objects, manipulate footprints, harm livestock.
And the harm is not just physical, but spiritual. Again, undermining this personal balance and this relationship that’s supposed to exist with the holy people. Again, it’s a distortion and a perversion of that.
>> They also engage in psychological manipulation. They’ll imitate the voices of your loved ones. Tap on windows. The Appalachians just are like, “Yep, yep.” you know, like I reckon, I know that uh tap on windows, scratch at doors, or call to people from outside the home.
Stories describe them using intimate knowledge of a person’s history to like convince you to believe that they know you or you know them. Um, in this sense, the threat is not only external or internal. Obviously, it can be so terrifying. And >> let me paint a picture for you guys, too, cuz we’re in the desert southwest with this. And this is coming from Sean.
Oh, that’s I think if I could move anywhere else, it’d probably be out there. I’ve always loved it out there for some reason.
>> But on the Navajo land, let me paint a picture here. Right.
>> Houses aren’t like here in Nashville, you know, where it’s like, oh, there’s a neighbor >> many miles in between.
>> Yep. Distance.
>> A lot of land, too. A lot of them have, you know, a lot and it’s very open.
>> So, imagine late at night, >> you know, they all have dogs. They all, a lot of them keep dogs if they, you know, are farmers, herders, whatever.
And they also keep dogs to warn them of things like this. And imagine your dogs bark and then it just stops.
>> Yep.
>> Dude, >> I’d be so scared.
>> You know how dark it is out there >> because there’s no light pollution. It’s so dark.
>> And then I mean you there’s been cases of people hearing them walk on their on their roofs or >> knock on the door imitating a friend.
And this is like at 11 at night, right?
And again, like I I know that anyone who’s listening who’s been in Appalachia or lives in Appalachia, obviously again, different different form of crypted, but they’re like, “Don’t answer the door.
Don’t listen to the voice that calls you. Don’t whistle.” Like >> there’s rules that people maybe people that live in cities scoff at, but they definitely should be respected in these environments.
>> I wouldn’t play around with it if I like as someone who like on a lot of this stuff like you know, it’s always like is this real? Is it not? Do I believe in it? But when it comes to things like that, I’m just going to I’m just going to assume the snake is poisonous. You know what I mean?
>> And my thing to Yeah. No kidding. My thing too with it is, you know, when you listen to a lot of the tribal leaders and even Sean Clint, which I’ll talk more of some of his stories, but on the Navajo land, 80% of people have had an encounter with this.
>> Wow.
>> 80%.
>> Wow. That’s a lot. No matter if it’s a child, >> a child, the elder all, you know, any no matter the age, 80% of the Nav Navajo Nation have had an inter interaction or an encounter with a skin walker to some capacity.
>> How many there are?
>> Yeah, >> that’s that’s a big question for me.
>> Yeah. So, but it’s like when I hear 80% I’m like, well, why would they make it up?
>> Yeah.
>> You know, >> exactly. So, and and just hearing some of those, >> I’m sure some of that is like, you know, there is something to say about like suggestion, you know, we hear we hear stories like in our case, it would be more like a ghost haunting or some kind of paranormal house haunting. So then when you’re in a creepy house or what, you know, you’re like, “Oh, I did hear this or this one thing moved.” And I think some of that is influenced by suggestion, but that’s still even even if you include suggestion, that’s a very high number.
>> Yeah. I mean, it’s and it’s just I don’t know, man. It’s I don’t want to find out. I don’t want to find out. I don’t.
And I And I also love the the reflection of kind of the broader Navajo understanding of like why they’re so careful with speaking about it, speaking about it at night, speaking about it casually, speaking about it flippantly or with disrespect because there’s this understanding that words create reality, which like I have abracadabra tattooed across my shoulder, which literally means by my words I create.
>> And so in their belief system, naming a harmful force gives it space to move.
And that’s why the subject is considered so taboo and it’s so regulated. Which is interesting because the opposite occurs in demonology where if you have a demon’s name, you now have control of it, right? You know, and so it’s interesting to see that inverted.
>> It’s a whole other ball of wax. Yeah.
Whole other ball game, whole other rule set.
>> This is a person.
>> And it’s just gosh, again, I just don’t want to find out. I’ll take their word for it. But some of the stories that Sean Clint when I was researching this, what he tells is >> just unbelievable.
>> Oh, we’re gonna we’re gonna get into that because what we’re going to do is we’re gonna like finish kind of this history portion. We’re going to do Skinwalker Ranch and the stories are just >> um but like and I also want to like emphasize that you know cuz this was something prior to researching this. I thought that you could like call in or summon a skinw walker and you can’t.
>> Like that’s not actually something you can accidentally open the door for them but you can’t summon them. Um, like no one whether you’re an outsider or an insider can summon a skinwalker without being the one who’s like participating in in the craft.
>> There’s a lot of misinformation.
>> Yeah. Skin walkers come because they choose to, not because someone calls them. And again, the only thing that can unintentionally draw them is disrespect.
>> So you can’t speak lightly of it, speak joy of it, make fun of it. Those kind of things can can cause an encounter to happen.
>> Yeah. And avoidance and protection are often rooted in weapons, not in weapons or confrontation, but in maintaining harmony. The most powerful protection against skin walkers is living in accordance with ho. Again, strong family relationships, emotional balance, performing ceremonies, respecting taboos, and honoring the land. In the Navajo worldview, imbalance attracts danger, harmony repels it. And this is this is kind of the the spiritual framework in that skin walkers kind of operate in. And just and it’s especially like they’re one of the few entities that is just outside of like demons that is like specifically pure evil.
>> Yes.
>> Like so many other paranormal entities can be neutral or they can be good.
>> Yeah. Exactly.
>> Or it can be you know is it is it the energy or the spirit of a person you know that passed away. These are 100% evil.
>> They they have set out to be malevolent.
They’ve chosen a path to just do harm.
Yeah.
>> You know, >> and I also found it interesting again as as these these white guys kind of mclassified, >> you know, misunderstanding the what was going on spiritually and calling them skinw walkers was there was a lot of overlap um kind of assumptions that it was like werewolves, demonic possession, >> sorcery because that’s what they understood from Europe. So there is some overlap in in like the white white people’s understanding of what skinwalkers were at least initially. Um mixing them up with kind of more vampire werewolf lore.
>> Sure.
>> Um which I’m sure you know the whole I have to be home before the sun rises you know played into that. And of course >> the 20th and 21st centuries we’ve seen pop culture kind of further sensationalize these. They’re often depicted as shape-shifting monsters rather than human sorcerers which I think human sorcerer is really the best way to phrase it. Um, and then of course, Skinwalker Ranch has really brought up a lot of interest in what this can be and the impact it can have, but also Skinwalker Ranch is just incredibly bizarre.
>> It’s kind of its own world. Yes. You know, Skinwalker Ranch. Um, gosh, should we dive into that? There’s so much.
>> I think we should dive in.
>> Skinwalker Ranch sits in a lonely stretch of the basin. The kind of place where the horizon feels too large and the night too heavy. It is quiet in the way abandoned churches are. Quiet, heavy, listening, expectant. You can stand in its fields and feel watch without ever seeing movement. Feel hunted without hearing footsteps. Feel small without knowing why. Locals avoid it after dark. Even the wind seems unwilling to linger too long. The land doesn’t merely contain stories. It circulates them, breathes them, feeds them. It is a place where strange lights drift silently across the sky, where animals die without sound or struggle, where gigantic shadows move in ways that break the rules of anatomy, and where people vanish into terror without leaving tracks. Skinwalker Ranch is not haunted in the way houses are haunted.
It is haunted the way a forest is haunted, the way something older, smarter, and hungrier than humans can haunt a place it claims as its own.
When Terry and Gwen Sherman bought the ranch in 1994, the place felt wrong from the first day. Not dramatically. No cold spots, no ghostly apparitions, no poltergeist theatrics, just wrong. The ranch house had been left in strange disarray by the previous owners. Dead bolts on both sides of the door. Heavy chains bolted into walls in the sense that whoever lived there before had tried desperately to keep something out, or perhaps to keep something in. No one warned the Shermans, but the land began explaining itself almost immediately.
Their first encounter came trotting calmly out of the distance. A wolf. Not a normal wolf, not even a large wolf.
This thing was prehistoric in scale.
Massive shoulders, furl like steel wool, and eyes too calm for a predator. Wolves were not native to the region and hadn’t been for decades. Yet, this thing walked right up to the family like a neighbor stopping by. It let Terry pet it. It even seemed to enjoy the attention.
Then, in a heartbeat, it lunged, jaws clamping around the head of a calf and trying to yank it through the metal bars of the corral. Terry drew his handgun and fired directly into its ribs. The wolf didn’t react. He fired again. Still nothing. He fired six times. Chunks of flesh peeled away, gray and moist like rotting meat scraped off a bone. But the wolf’s expression never changed. Only after a blast from a high-powered rifle did it release the calf and trod away, completely unbothered. Terry followed its tracks through the soft mud. Huge paw prints pressed deep into the earth until they simply ended. One moment there were prints, the next there was nothing. No blood trail, no disturbed brush, no place for a massive animal to hide. It was though the creature had dissolved into air.
>> And real quick, if I walk into a house, like did they view this house before buying it? Because if I walk into a house and I see chains and deadbolts on both sides of the door, >> what’s what’s the movie um where the it’s like a demonic kid and like the parents are locking their door and have chains on the inside cuz they’re trying to keep the kid out.
>> Case 49, something like that.
>> Case 49. I think terrifying. But if I walk into a house and I see that cuz I understand like I I like how they mention again we come in if we don’t have a cultural understanding, we think haunted house, right? We think cold spots. we think. So, if none of those things are happening and you just kind of feel weird, you’re going to rationalize it. You’re going to say, “Well, it’s a new house. It’s out in the open. I don’t have any close neighbors.” You’re going to rationalize. But, I come in and I see dead bolts on both sides of the door and chains. I’m out.
>> And it’s it’s funny. It’s funny when >> I’m going to check for a seller. Like, is there a body down there?
>> Evil dead. Don’t read the book. Um, it’s it’s funny. You know, you know how certain things just kind of hit you when you read certain lines. Um, years ago, uh, really good friend of mine, they were him and his family were looking for a new house and there was one for sale down the road from where my dad lived and they went to go view it and there was a a room at the back and it was like a bedroom and the only way the only locks it had were on the outside.
>> Ooh.
>> I was like, “What was in there, man?
>> I don’t like that.” Yeah, that’s uncomfortable.
>> I remember they were even telling me and my dad and we’re like, “What was in there, man?” You know, like so creepy.
>> Yeah. Like, what were they keeping locked in there? It Long story short, they didn’t get that house because of that.
>> Yeah. I’d be terrified and be like, “What is in here?” And like, and then you get to the point where you have this like prehistoric sized wolf, first of all.
>> Yeah.
>> Brave to pet it.
>> Yeah. I wouldn’t have known that.
>> But then I wouldn’t have gotten near it.
But then to like shoot it multiple times and it just walks off.
>> And that’s one of the the most famous stories about Skinwalker Ranches, the bulletproof wolf, as it’s called online, >> you know, and # newband name.
>> Yeah. No kidding. And and the gun that Terry used was not his handgun was a I believe it was a 357 or a 44 Magnum.
>> That’s a big That’s a big pistol.
>> Yeah. It’s not like a 9 mm or a 22. I mean or like it was >> Yeah.
>> I believe it was a 44.
>> It was a revolver. And those things pack a punch. If you’ve never shot a 357 or a 4 or 44, they those >> Yeah.
>> Like that is a twohand expect some kickback pistol. It’s a big gun.
>> Oh, it it is. So, he shot it six times with with one of those.
>> And that makes that actually makes the story even more intense because knowing that and knowing it’s not like a little 22, you know, or something like that.
>> I got my slingshot.
>> Yeah. Here we go. I threw some rocks at it. Um, knowing that makes it even more compelling because again, that is a that’s a big gun.
>> Yeah.
>> Like for a pistol and >> Yeah.
>> Wow.
>> You know, you take out a car with >> Anyways, and trust me guys, with Skinwalker Ranch, we’re just getting started. If you’ve never seen like the footage of Skinwalker Ranch or the documentaries.
>> Wow.
>> Yeah, it’s We’re going to get into it.
It’s incredibly >> bizarre. It’s so strange. I want to visit.
>> So, with all that that happened, that should have been enough to send the Sherman’s packing, but it was only the opening act.
>> At night, lights drifted overhead, silent, intelligent, curious. Not just an aircraft, but close-range orbs floating low over the property. The orange lights felt watchful, almost predatory. The small blue orbs felt playful in a cruel way. One hovered over the above the cattle pens like a child tapping on an aquarium. When the family’s three dogs chased it into the trees, the orb danced between branches like a living spark. The dogs snapped and barked and lunged. The orb drifted farther, coaxing them deeper into the dark. Then three sharp yelps cut through the night, brief, horrified, final.
Terry found them the next morning or what was left of them. Three greasy, tarlike piles of charred biological pulp. No bones, no fur, no smell of fire or predators, just something that looked like it had been liquefied instantly.
Their bodies reduced to scorch remains without any ex uh external heat. After that, the Shermans never kept dogs again.
>> That’s so sad.
>> And that right, you know, >> and and there’s you can’t that’s not something that you can explain or rationalize away.
>> No.
>> Right. Like again, we we try to we try to explain the world around us. Like >> I got nothing. Like even if I was being my most delusional self, >> I couldn’t make up a story for why my like three dogs are just liquefied.
>> Yeah. Instantly, >> you know, by some >> that like makes my stomach hurt. I like And I was like reading all this earlier, but just like I’m picturing it in my mind’s eye and I now it’s like terrifying.
>> Yeah. It’s absolutely >> Again, I I don’t know that I would have made it past day one.
>> Yeah. Again, going back to the bolts, if I saw that, I’d be like, >> if I saw the bolts, I’d be like, I don’t think so. So, I don’t think so. Both sides of the door. No.
>> Yeah. No, thank you.
>> It’s been fun, guys. Let’s sell it.
>> Yeah.
>> Anyways, >> which we’ll get into that.
>> We’ll get into that.
>> The cattle fared no better. Entire animals were mutilated with with surgical precision. One cow lay in the field with a skin around its jaw peeled away in a perfect circle as though a cookie cutter had been pressed through flesh. Its eye socket was empty. Organs were missing. And there wasn’t a drop of blood anywhere. Not on the hide, not in the soil, not inside the cavity. Another cow disappeared entirely from a snowy field. Its hoof prints led into the pasture, then stopped dead in the middle of the untouched snow. No drag marks, no human tracks, no vehicle imprints, just stopped as if something had plucked the animal straight up into the sky, leaving nothing but disturbing silence behind.
I think UFOs with that >> inside the house, the phenomenon took on a different flavor. Less predatory, more tormenting. Groceries the family had just unloaded would re would appear rebagged in the car. I’d be so pissed.
>> I’d be so mad. Like that’s just a ghost that just wants to be an [ __ ] You know what I mean? Like >> that’s Can you imagine?
>> I’m going to steal all of their left shoes.
>> Oh my god. You like your socks? Say bye to them. Um, tools vanished and then and later reappeared in impossible places like high branches or locked sheds. This ghost, this entity is a >> This entity is a dick.
>> Good god. Doors open on their own. Heavy footsteps thutdded across the roof.
Voices murmured just outside windows.
Deep guttural voices speaking a language that was neither English nor Navajo nor human. Gwyn once left the kitchen for minutes and returned to find every cupboard open. Uh, every dish arranged meticulously on the counter as if for inspection. Something inside the house wanted the family afraid and it was succeeding. Two years in, the Shermans broke. Two years.
>> No, thank you.
>> These are like the toughest people ever.
>> I know, right? They’re like, they’re ready for the apocalypse now.
>> They’re like, you know what? We went we just went through that. Nothing can ever be that bad.
>> Yeah. Nothing can ever be this bad.
Jeez.
>> Financially ruined, mentally exhausted, and terrified for their lives, they sold the ranch to billionaire Robert Bigalow, who dispatched a scientific team to investigate. These men were hardened researchers, physicists, biologists, and special forces personnel. H >> They arrived with sensors, cameras, night vision gear, and the confidence of men who had seen dangerous things before.
>> I’m a real boo.
>> GI Joe. Uh, Skinwalker Ranch shattered that confidence. The researchers discovered quickly that the phenomenon were not random. They were responsive.
They seemed to watch the watchers.
One night, several investigators witnessed a ripple in the air above a field as if the sky were a thin sheet of fabric being pushed upward from the other side. The distortion brightened into an amber oval suspended horizontally in midair. Through the high-powered scopes, they claimed to see something crawling out of it. A dark humanoid figure dropped from the glowing aperture onto the ground, then sprinted into the night. Jeez.
>> Moments later, the oval collapsed into darkness. Cameras aimed at the field malfunctioned simultaneously, their footage wiped clean. Other times, animals panicked at invisible threats.
Cows refused to cross certain areas, circling wide around patches of empty field. Anytime I see animals, >> dude, animals know.
>> They just know, man.
>> Animals know. like I will, you know, cuz you you hear about that in like when they talk about the like the tsunamis, you know, in in Southeast Southeast and Southwest Asia, they talk about how the animals will leave. Like you’ll see the animals fleeing cuz the animals know it’s coming.
>> I’m with I’m with you guys, >> you know, and and that’s even the thing even with the cats, like if I see the cat like staring at something in the corner, I’m like, “What the [ __ ] is over there?” Our cats are always staring at stuff and I’m like, “God, >> I trust I trust animals to be really good judges of human character and I trust them to know when something’s in the room.” Like, if animals don’t like you, I am I am side eyeing you real hard.
>> Yeah, I’m very suspicious.
>> Very suspicious. And And it’s one thing if like this one animal doesn’t like you because it’s an 18-year-old cat that can’t see and it hates everyone.
>> It’s another thing like especially dogs.
If a dog doesn’t like you, >> no, >> absolutely not. Like there’s there’s a few grumpy old men dogs, but for the most part, if a dog doesn’t like you >> Mhm.
>> there’s something going on there.
>> Stranger danger.
>> Yeah.
>> Let’s see. Investigators place sensors there and discovered unexpected electromagnetic fields. Areas where equip areas where equipment died instantly and compasses spun wildly.
That’s crazy.
>> That’s so nuts.
>> Something invisible hovered over those spots. Something large enough to disrupt electronics and terrify living creatures. And yet nothing visible appeared on camera.
When NIDS installed a sophisticated camera array on a tall pole designed so each camera filmed the next, the system went dead overnight. Upon inspection, the the cables had been peeled open. The outer castings had been stripped away with surgical precision for several feet. No fragments lay on the ground. No claw marks, no tool marks, no footprints, just neatly exposed wires as if an invisible surgeon had dissected the equipment with impossible delicacy.
The cattle mutilations continued under scientific watch. One cow, closely monitored and healthy in the after early afternoon, was found dead an hour later.
The excisions were so clean that one investigator compared them to laser surgery. Again, no blood, no struggle, no tracks. Whatever had done it had operated under the noses of trained observers with an ease that bordered on arrogance.
>> The no blood thing >> that just the thing that really trips me out >> and that makes me think aliens.
>> Yeah. you know, because I feel like we’ve there’s been cases like that before of of things being drained of blood or like >> Well, and when you when you take that into account with like the orbs and the like liquefification of animals and the electromagnetic fields that are in perfect circles that fills you and that’s one of the things that’s so fascinating about Skinwalker Ranch, like obviously there’s this the like Skinwalker accounts where they’re they not only had the wolf, but they they also experienced, you know, tapping on the windows, knocking at the doors, walking across the roof, hearing hearing someone walk around. Um, so they experience all that, but the UFO I Are you more scared of a skinwalker or the UFOs?
>> Skinwalker.
>> Really?
>> Yeah, absolutely.
>> I think it’s UFOs for me.
>> Really?
>> Because it’s so unpredictable. Like I know so if I’m if I’m wellversed in in skinwalker lore, like I know the rituals. I know not to open the door. I know to just wait till morning, right? I I know the parameters by which it operates. I have no parameters >> for Aliens.
>> I think for me the main reason why I choose being more afraid of skin walkers is they are malevolent.
>> Yeah.
>> Aliens I think are just here to do some research and they probably wouldn’t have killed the dogs >> if the dogs didn’t chase after the like their little orb thing. Yeah. And probably probably felt >> the orbs is totally separate entity as well cuz we don’t know.
>> We don’t know. I I’m I’m I’m saying >> a weird place, you know.
>> All I know is >> But they’re killing cattle.
>> Yeah. You think that’s like a research >> research thing? I mean that that’s been across the world, you know, seeing cattle draw cattle.
>> I don’t know.
>> But the I think the main thing though it’s just they lived there for 2 years and and the aliens never really did anything to them.
>> That’s fair in the context of Skinwalker Ranch. That’s a really big point.
>> And it seemed like But again, the whole thing with this is how many freaking entities are there? Because now inside the house it there’s like a ghost. Yep.
And I don’t think that a skinwalker has that power.
>> No.
>> And I don’t think >> to my knowledge anything I read like skinwalkers can’t make themselves invisible.
>> No.
>> Yeah. They have to take either their human form or their kind of animal illusion form.
>> I think my theory on this whole thing is that there’s some sort of interdimensional gate there.
>> Yep.
>> And that’s where things >> portal of some kind.
>> Some things just cross over like >> there’s a space in >> took the wrong exit. where I grew out grew up in Wyoming is not far from where Mount Rushmore is. It’s like a two-hour drive.
>> Wow.
>> And in that in that kind of space, I can’t remember exactly where it is, but there’s a cave that you can go visit and I I don’t even remember what it’s called cuz I completely blanked it until now, but gravity’s messed up.
>> Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
>> Where you you can you’re walking up these steps and there’s this railing and if you put a ball on the bottom of the railing, it rolls up. And there’s certain places where if you stand on certain spots, you get optical illusions. So like let’s say there’s somebody there that’s, you know, 7 foot five and someone who’s 4 foot. If they stand in the right spot, the 4ft person looks taller than the 4ft the 7 foot five person.
>> That’s so weird.
>> And when you go into the actual there’s a cabin there and this was discovered by like a bunch of high schoolers and they were like what is this? But you stand in the cabin. If you stand in the corner, >> you can lean all the way forward to where your nose is almost on the floor and you won’t fall. And you can sit I did it. You can sit on a chair that’s balanced on one leg.
>> That’s so weird.
>> It’s so bizarre. And you’ll see like water move in a way that it’s not supposed to. So it’s it’s like obviously there’s something electromagnetic happening there.
>> Yep. Big time.
>> That’s altering gravity.
>> Strange.
>> So it happens. So it makes me wonder if you know because you also have in the paranormal world where like these portals happen where you know either ghosts malevolent entities can enter exit. It makes me wonder if there’s both an electromagnetic field like what’s at that cabin in addition to yeah >> some kind of evil porter and portal and the reason that the skin walkers are there or skinwalker we don’t know how many >> are there is because they’re they’re in their own practice trying to access that evil portal. Yeah. Makes me wonder that.
completely from my brain. So there’s nothing >> we’re we’re just we’re speculating here.
We’re no experts, >> but it’s I mean it’s so thoughtprovoking. That’s what I love about this about these cases. It’s just like what the heck.
>> Yeah. And you just can’t explain it. You can you can make your best guess, but you can’t explain it.
>> Yeah. It’s just like right when you think oh that’s that. It’s like well what about this?
>> It’s oh my god.
>> And we’re starting over.
>> All I know is to avoid the area at all costs.
>> Yeah. Right. Just don’t go there.
>> Okay. Perhaps the most terrifying discoveries came not from the cameras or sensors, but from what happened to the investigators themselves. Several NIDs members reported that after leaving the ranch, the phenomenon followed them home.
>> Sorry.
>> Thank you.
>> One scientist family heard footsteps in their hallway at night. Dude, stop it. Another another saw shadow figures in their living room.
>> Uhuh.
>> Oh my god. Nope. One man’s teenage son reported a glowing orb floating outside his bedroom window. Researchers called this the hitchhiker effect, a suggestion that whatever haunted skinwalker ranch was not confined to the property, it could cling to people, move with them, observe them in new locations, and torment their families.
>> No thanks.
>> Excuse me. This effect persisted years later into the government funded AA WSAP and BASS investigations where military intelligence contractors described the same grim pattern. Once the ranch noticed you, it didn’t let go easily.
>> I hate even personifying it like that.
Like the ranch sees you.
>> Yeah.
>> And and I like in in the in the beginning of this where it’s like it’s not haunted like a house is haunted.
It’s haunted like a forest is haunted because that drives the picture home for me. And that’s exactly cuz when you’re in like >> woods >> that are scary. That is a different kind of scary than you’re in a house where you’re like uh something’s in this house.
>> Yeah.
>> Very different scary.
>> Not good, man.
>> And again, and if you we’re going to talk about travel here in a minute. I I love like New Mexico area and those kind of in Utah and they’re so beautiful, but they are so expansive. Oh yeah.
>> So again, like you said, you’re out in the dark >> and there’s no light >> and it’s wide open spaces like >> not good, man.
>> Nope.
>> When the ranch passed to its modern owner, businessman Brandon Fugal, the phenomenon changed again, or perhaps simply adapted to new observers. Drones sent into certain areas lost GPS suddenly and plummeted like swatted insects. Rockets launched into a triangular patch of the sky would veer off course or fail without explanation.
as though hitting an invisible barrier.
Team members reported radiation spikes, dizziness, and skin burns after standing on the wrong patch of ground for too long. Shadows moved inside locked buildings. Voices whispered through radio channels that weren’t on.
Something intelligent remained active, hungry, restless. And throughout all this, the ranch maintained a single unbroken truth. It never allowed anyone to look directly at it. Every time an experiment neared success, equipment failed, cameras died, batteries drained, data was wiped. The intelligence at Skinwalker Ranch seemed to operate with strategy as though the land itself were alive and defending its secrets. It was not merely paranormal. It was predatory.
Whatever hunted the Shermans, toyed with nids, stalked government contractors, and taunted Fugal’s research displayed a single consistent behavior. It reacted.
It observed the observers. It sabotaged the instruments designed to expose it.
It punished curiosity. In the end, Skinwalker Ranch cannot be neatly categorized. It is not a UFO site or a haunting or crypted hot spot. It is all them and something deeper. Something that wears different masks depending on who is watching. The bulletproof wolf was a mask. The blue orbs were mask. The mutilations, the voices, the portals, the shadows, masks. The phenomenon behave like a cunning animal playing with prey, staying just out of reach, enjoying the fear it stirs up. What makes Skinwalker Ranch so terrifying is not simply what has been witnessed there, but the sense that the ranch itself is a living entity and intelligent that can shapeshift, retaliate, observe, and invade. An entity that understands human curiosity and knows how to manipulate it. Whatever lives there does not sleep. It only watches. It wants to be remembered.
>> And that is the scary thing where like it can manipulate itself.
>> Yeah.
>> Like and and change. and that like that is just it’s too much for me. It’s too much for me. And imagine being like a scientist and you know you come out there and all of this stuff happens and you’re already wrestling with I can’t scientifically explain this. I don’t know what the answer is. And then you go home and weird [ __ ] starts happening in your house.
>> I would hate that. I would be so mad because, you know, things can attach to you. And it really sounds it really is.
It’s like skinwalker is this this hybrid of of evil entities, you know, like skin walkers, UFOs, and then also just a bunch of unknowns like what are all those electromagnetic fields and walls that you can’t pass or things that animals have to walk around? What is that?
>> And there there’s actually one thing that was cited on the uh the ranch when I was doing some investigating also.
It’s um voices near a river.
>> Oh, >> like somebody fell in >> and >> might be the skin walker.
>> And again, some of the lore of the native people there is when you that is like an entity that’s going to pull you in and drown you.
>> There’s a there’s also a Japanese version of that. I wish I could remember what it’s called.
>> Yeah. Yeah. It’s one of those Yo-kai.
>> Yes. Yes. And it’s got the little cup on its head.
>> Yeah. And you so if you if you’re not familiar with this, it’s a it is a it’s a Japanese water demon >> that will kind of call to you and it might pull you in the water. If you’re too close to the water, you come to help it. But they have a little cup of water on their head that they can’t spill. So the way that you kind of outsmart this demon is to like get them to bow, get them to be respectful.
>> Yeah.
>> And empty the cup of water cuz then they have to return to the water and they can’t take you.
>> Oh gosh.
>> It’s such a neat little quirk. They’re they’re like a the artistic depictions of them are like very cute but they’re very dangerous.
>> Yeah. Oh, it’s Oh, it’s adorable until you know, get your soul. But one thing I I want to I want to tell a story when I was researching some of this.
>> Um, want to give a shout out to Sean Clint Shadow Productions on YouTube because he is an active >> member. Yeah. In the Navajo and so is his uncle and he has a lot of >> unbelievable stories on his YouTube channel. But, um, when I was doing some investigation, I thought, let me go to the source.
>> Yeah.
>> And he told a story that I I I was listening to it at night time like a genius, you know. Oh, this is that’s not bad. And then meanwhile, I’m scared to death. But he um talks about an encounter. I believe it was his second encounter with one. And he has a big family and they were going to a part of the the nation and they were building a house for I think his grandmother or it was like a guest house and and so there’s a lot of people over. Again, it’s that’s one thing I liked about this though. It’s like the the communities are just awesome. they all help each other and stuff, >> but um a lot of people are staying over and there’s no extra room.
>> So, him and his uncle are like, “Hey, let’s just we’ll we’ll go camp out, you know, we’ll go uh go sit by the fire and stuff.” So, they’re sitting out there talking about some of the um encounters they’ve had. And and he’s basically pretty much a ranger in training under his uncle. And so, um he’s like, you know, I’ll I’m going to sleep in the bed of the truck. I have a air mattress, right? And so, he’s lays down. It’s 1:00 in the morning. It’s nighttime. It’s uh great weather. No bugs. He’s really digging it. You can see the sky and stuff. It’s like, “Oh man, this is great.” And he falls asleep.
>> He wakes up and he’s just has an overwhelming sense of panic >> and he can’t move.
He can’t move. And and he knows what it is at this point because that’s one thing. It’s like that powder that they can spray on people can induce paralysis.
>> And so he’s there and he he can’t move.
And then all of a sudden >> he he sees a face come over him.
>> And it’s the shape of a coyote with two red eyes.
>> Mm- No, thank you.
>> And he manages he and it’s getting it’s reaching out to touch him, >> you know, to do what it god knows what >> whatever it wants to do. and he manages to somehow break free and get his weapon and like swing at it and he gets his uncle and then they then they’re looking around. It ran off into the darkness.
>> Mm- Oh my god. Like, have you ever had sleep paralysis?
>> I I have. I I’ve never had any of the stuff that comes with it.
>> Yeah.
>> You know, like the old hag or the hatman, you know? I’ve never had that.
Thank god. But it’s it’s terrifying.
I’ve just had the like like they talk about like you you wake up like overwhelmed with terror and you feel like weight on you. I have felt like weight on me but like not seen anything.
But sleep paralysis on its own >> Yeah. Oh dude >> is terrifying. But you’re you can’t move and all of the sudden this coyote head with red eyes leans over your face.
>> I like props to him for not losing his sanity cuz I would have lost it.
>> Yeah. and and he had been in training up to that point. I mean, and I encourage anybody to go check out his YouTube channel. I >> And can you spell it for them because I >> Yeah, it’s um I have it’s s h a c l >> en actually. And it’s it’s Sean Clint Shadow Productions on YouTube. He has a I mean so many great stories not only of Skinwalkers, but a lot of like Navajo legends and and things like that, different w >> This is like what he does. His family does this.
>> This is his thing. Like he he’s kind of one of these protectors. and um many many stories but he even has a couple videos where uh him I think it’s him his brother and his uncle go around and they find these different tunnels which the skinwalkers used to traverse the area >> during the daytime and stuff like yeah that’s what >> also I mean it it kind of like this legend has been around long enough that you the skinwalkers have to be teaching new skinw walkers >> I think so it it’s you know and we’ll never know for sure because it’s so guarded. Yeah.
>> You know, and and even with some of his material, he cannot share cuz the tribal elders like you can you can tell everybody else this story, but this one >> do that or you can only you can only tell this part of a story.
>> Yes. Yes.
>> Yeah. It’s very and he and he does and I I’ve seen interviews with him where he talks about like he honors, >> you know, whatever the tribal elders lay out, that’s what he does. And >> he’s got to >> um and then I have a couple stories from so this is Ranger Jonathan Dover.
But I went through um he wrote a book that’s really really interesting but had like skinwalker related specific cases that I felt like were really >> to what we know of skinwalkers and one of his most famous cases happened reports had come in of livestock being mutilated of strange figures moving through the brushlands and again it was this they’re moving way too fast like whatever this is it’s moving way too fast Navajo ranchers are familiar with the habits of coyotes wild dogs and predators these were something else so do and his partner headed to a known hot spot of strange sightings. And as they drove, something ran across the road ahead of them, it moved like a person, but it dropped low to the ground with an animal’s fluidity. And it alternated between four legs, two legs, four legs again.
>> In the beam of the headlights, it was a blur of like alternating legs. They stopped the vehicle, they drew their weapons, and they came out alongside the ridge. They saw like running, heavy running. The rhythm was wrong. It was too fast. It was too light. It was too smooth. No animal moves like that. They swept their flashlights across the rock face. They caught a shape human-sized, crouched low, limbs hang angled unnaturally, watching them. When Dove’s partner shouted, the figure did not move. His partner fired a warning shot, and that’s when it moved. It scaled the rock with impulse possible speed. Far faster than any climber. Do chased after it, his flashlight shaking in his hands.
When he reached the top, the figure was gone, but the footprints were fresh and it was bare feet and it was spaced so far apart that the creature would have had to leap 6 to 8 ft at a time.
>> My god.
>> But the prince were a human’s foot. Do paced the distance out himself. No human could jump like that repeatedly across rough rock and then the tracks just ended right at the edge of a sheer cliff. No skid marks, no slides, no handprints, no dirt displacement, just gone. And then it says in here, Dover, he was feeling uncomfortable. feels the back of his the hair on the back of his neck rise. His partner whispers, “We should leave.” And Dover’s like, “Yep.” >> Can you imagine?
>> Yeah.
>> Like I the footprints with the leaping is what really like that gives that every time I read it that gives me goosebumps where I’m like that makes me really uncomfortable.
>> I couldn’t imagine seeing that.
>> You know, just and and that’s one thing too with all these stories, you know, a lot of people I think maybe go, “Oh, that’s not that bad. Oh, that’s I could do that.” in the moment >> internet tough guy talk. It’s like no it is it is that bad >> and you would be scared >> cuz all these guys that are you know they’re scared >> and rightfully so man it’s just >> I couldn’t imagine >> I couldn’t imagine and he tells one more of a family reported something knocking on their windows at night and at first they dismissed it as the wind or wild animals again we we create justifications but it continued night after night and when the children began crying in their sleep saying something was watching them the parents called the rangers. So Dover arrives. He sees the prints instantly. They’re large, >> like long feet. They’re human, but they’re wrong. And they were smeared across the bedroom. Uh, sorry. He saw the handprints on the window first. So large, longfingered. They’re human, but they’re not quite right. Smeared across the bedroom window, high up on the wall, far above normal reach. There’s no way someone could stand there and reach it.
>> Do placed his hand against one print, and it was almost 2 in longer than his.
And Dover is a big guy. Like, he’s a big man. The tracks around the house again were human, barefoot, but just wrong.
The toes were elongated. Some of the impressions look padded, almost like it was a hybrid of a paw and a footprint.
>> And as he examines the ground, Dover feels himself being watched and like chest titans. He interviews the children. Their descriptions match the physical evidence. Something standing on two legs, but too tall, but shaped like it was bending in the wrong places is how the children describe it. And in the words of one of the children, it smiled at me. Which is just so like >> do called in a report and stepped back.
He knew what comes next in such cases.
This is when they bring out the medicine man, the songs, the protected rights.
They perform those rituals to try to like protect and cleanse the area.
>> Yeah.
>> When he came back weeks later for unrelated duties, the family said that the knocks had stopped, but the children will still not go anywhere near the windows.
>> Understandable.
>> Wouldn’t either.
>> Absolutely not.
>> So scary. It’s a good thing that we film this in the daytime so I have time to forget because >> that is like the the coyote head for me is really when I when he >> and the leaping the leaping >> when he had described that that face appearing with the red eyes >> y >> and you know just the noises it was making I was like >> good lord >> just I just and again combined with sleep paralysis is terrifying >> and one thing I meant to say too is after that they had to do a cleansing ritual on him because he had been sprayed with that powder Yep.
>> Big time.
>> So, if you’re not familiar with me or you haven’t followed me, I lived in my car for several months during 2020 hiking state parks. My favorite part of that whole trip cuz I drove all the way down the east coast across the southern US until I hit the Pacific Ocean and then I went up and I looped around. My favorite part though was the American Southwest and especially because everything was closed. I mean, there was so much, you know, that you could do outside and the hiking was beautiful. I was working completely online at the time. I would absolutely live in my car again. 100% 10 out of 10. No complaints.
>> Even with three cats.
>> Even with three cats, we’re gonna make it. We’re gonna make it work. Maybe get a We’ll Maybe get an SUV, maybe get a truck, a little more space.
>> That probably that probably work out better.
>> Um, so the way that I designed this travel portion of the episode is I designed it around a road trip. Uh, because it’s just such a great area to drive through and hike and see kind of a lot of these natural outdoor sites. So, on day one, I always, and if you’re new here and you’re like this, what are you doing with the travel episodes? The reason I work in travel and like we, you know, when I first did first season with this and now Andy has joined me is I love giving people one like people that just love haunted and horror traveling when they go. I love giving people travel itineraries. I also understand that with the way things are in the economy, a lot of people can’t travel right now. So, this is my way of kind of sharing my travel, sharing my love of travel with people, maybe giving you something to put on your vision board for the future and also doing things local to the United States. So if you live near these areas, you can still get out and still go do and see new things.
And and I just think the travel makes us better people. It helps us understand others. It helps us see things outside our own little world. Yeah. And it it it really it really makes a difference for perspective.
>> Agreed.
>> Um so this is this is my gift to you, but also just for my like travel junkies and my horror people that are like where’s the haunted whatever. I just like just I’ll just build it for you.
So, you can always I try to put the cities or the region in each of the podcast titles. So, if you’re going to a city like New York City, I did, you know, we’ve done a couple of those. You can look at those podcasts and get travel recommendations.
>> Love it.
>> Anyways, we’re going to start here in Flagstaff. So, we’re going to start at Late for the Train Coffee. This is a local roastery and it’s known for like really strong, clean roast. I’m a coffee snob, so very good coffee, but it’s a great local spot. And then you’re going to go to Bright Side Bookshop. I’m always in a bookshop, but I love this one the most because it I like places that feature local authors. So, there’s a lot of southwestern authors, indigenous writers. Um, and I’m trying to read a lot more indigenous writers this year. I I realize that I have a pretty big gap in my knowledge. Not just I’m still, you know, learning real American history around indigenous communities, but I I realize I I don’t have a lot of reading their authorship.
I also realize I don’t have a lot of natural history because of how I grew up in school. So, those are the two things I’m really trying to branch into. So, >> if you are >> uh wanting to recommend some authors or a book, please absolutely you can send that in. Uh just send it into highway to hell at montymater.com.
And then after getting your coffee and your book, we’re going to go to Wupatki National Monument. This is the Wakoki PBLO, the Wupatki PBLO and Naliu. Uh these are major ancestral PBLON settlements. So, they they are from like 1100 to 1200 CE. They’re very very old.
There’s this beautiful red sandstone architecture. There’s trade hubs, ball courts, and then there’s this blow hole which is believed in some traditions to be connected to the underworld or the breath of the earth. Like, we don’t really know why it’s there, >> but that’s what it’s connected to. After that, go to Sunset Crater volcano. I love a volcano. I don’t care if it’s active, not active. I’m going to be on the volcano. This is like it’s a cinder cone shaped uh volcano. It erupted in 1085 BC.
1085 CE.
>> Wow. Um, it’s known for like there’s these huge like black lava fields, this fire shaped terrain, spirit trail. Um, and it’s it’s kind of this symbol of the land’s like the land’s ability to be destructive and regenerate.
>> U, and then the Cameron Trading Po post, which is historic 1916 trading post, which bridge the Navajo and non-Navajo trade routes. This is known for like this is where you’re going to get some really cool like indigenous art, rugs, silver work. It’s stone lot. Really, really cool.
And I didn’t wear them today. I totally forgot. Um, but remember when we were doing a show at Bon Joy’s >> and the two girl two girls came up to me at the end of one of the show. They were both Navajo Nation and gave me those earrings. I meant to wear them today and I forgot because I was doing a different episode before this. Um, but yeah, I have these beautiful handmade >> Navajo Nation beaded earrings that are just gorgeous. They’re black and white and red. Amazing. Uh, after the Trading Post, go to Tuba City. This is the largest community on the western Navajo Nation. This is known for all kinds of cultural intersection and it’s kind of this really quiet desert area and I love the desert. Like if you had to pick like one kind of landscape is it is it the beach? Is it the mountains? Is it the desert? Is it the what res I mean you’re from Florida so >> yeah that’s >> the swamp. No, I’m just kidding.
>> No, no, the swamp. The the land that time forgot. Um I I’ve always loved the desert. I don’t know why. I’ve always it just it’s resonated with me for some reason.
>> The desert is spiritual for me.
>> Yeah. I just I love how it looks. I mean, the weather’s great. I just love the the lore about it and just the even going back to things that we haven’t talked about like the Old West and I’ve always just been >> oddly fascinated in the desert. Yeah.
>> You know, and like cuz I like I also really love mountains and mountains present >> mountains feel more like a shield. Like I want to go to the mountains when I want to pull back, when I want to be shielded away. Like I will go to the desert when I want to discover something.
>> Yeah. I I don’t know. It’s I’ve just I I’m I’m of the same mindset. I just It’s always appealed to me for some reason.
>> Yep.
>> Don’t know why.
>> I’m weird. I don’t know.
>> And at the end of day one, we’re going to go to the Navajo Interactive Museum.
So, this is really beautiful. There’s a bunch of immersive presentations on the DA worldview, including the Hutzo, the Harmony concept, clan structure, creation stories. So, you can really learn about those holy people that created the Da people, but also a lot of their history, like we talked about in the beginning of the episode with the long walk.
>> And with this uh travel itinerary, I didn’t do a whole lot of like food speak easy stuff. Kind of find it as you go. I really prioritized the outdoor stuff because so much of this Yeah. So much of this is geology in this region and it’s so beautiful and Lord knows in our like the way that we live in our world now like we’re inside all the time >> we’re glued to technology. I’m really trying to build better habits about that.
>> You and me both.
>> Um but day two we’re going to go to the canyon dell the gateway into the canyon is known for strong da community roots and access to sacred land. So this is the place again in the beginning of the episode where people were hunted and slaughtered and the sacred sites were defaced. Wow. So, this is where those sacred sites still are. So, there’s Junction, White House, Spider Rock overlooks. These are these beautiful monumental uh red sandstone cliffs.
>> Spider Rock is the sacred home of Spiderwoman who taught weaving in the Navajo tradition. She’s the one who taught the DA how to weave. Um, and this area, this canyon is known for the continuous habitation for nearly 5,000 years from ancestral ancestral plebins to Navajo families today. And then I do recommend taking a Navajo guided canyon tour because well only Navajo guides can escort visitors into the canyon floor because of its sacredness. But it’s so like there’s cliff dwellings and like living Navajo farms within this canyon and they talk about the stories of survival and you know going through these times of persecution. really amazing and and I love in just in any general sense, but when you can get someone who is local or someone who understands the lore to give you those tours, it’s so amazing. And and especially with any kind of like anytime I’ve, you know, taken a tour that’s led by someone who’s native or spoken with someone who’s indigenous, they have such a deep understanding of their culture and their spirituality and their history. And there is something about especially like the older native men, there is something about the measured way that they speak >> that is really there’s something magical about that. I really love sitting with them and learning from them. It’s really really beautiful.
>> Um this is also if you go towards the end of the night, this is kind of a long a day trip in all these outdoor places.
This is kind of an area I would definitely pack a lunch, pack food cuz things are pretty spaced out. Um, but go stargazing in Chinlay. This is known for like we talked about this area is so open, no light pollution. This place is amazing. And this is these these skies in this Chinlay area are they’re quiet skies and they’re very sacred. Uh, so this is kind of a sacred space to kind of honor their culture. See a beautiful sky. On day three, uh, Monument Valley Tribal Park. So this is one of the most iconic landscapes in the world. These are the if you’ve seen a picture of Navajo Nation and you’ve seen those big sandstone butes rising from the open desert, that’s where this is. That’s that’s Monument Valley. Um this is known for like this is where all the Hollywood westerns are shot. Uh and this is like the place of like it has really profound like spiritual significance um in in in the DA world.
>> Um and then this was my favorite thing I did. So I did a Navajo guided like backcountry tour. Cool. So, you’re getting access to all these restricted areas and you can do it on horseback, which I did cuz I grew up on a ranch. I was like, “What?” Great. Um, so you can get to a place called the Ear of the Wind, which is a natural arch known for these like really cool acoustic echoes.
There’s the Big Hogan, which is an amphitheater like al cove with uh they used to hold ceremonies. And then there’s the Sun’s Eye, which is a petroglyph and a skylight sandstone dome. Um, these are all known for sacred stories tied to hero twins and certain teachings. But it’s it was so cool to be taught this and get to ride through the desert on horseback. Just >> that’s incredible.
>> Just amazing.
>> Um and then and you can kind of after this shift into Bluff, Utah, which is this small artsy desert town. If you like some of the artsy towns in New Mexico, Bluff is very like that. There’s Sandstone Bluffs, Indigenous History.
Really quiet, very spiritual, but just really cute and creative. Uh really loved it. Out right near Bluff, there’s the Sand Island Petroglyphs. It’s one of the densest rock art panels in the southwest. There’s thousands of images that span >> like from 2,000 years ago till about 300 years ago. Just these art forms.
>> And then you can there’s a there is a specific restaurant here called the Combridgeidge Beastro which is a local favorite. This is like a seasonal menu, Southwest Fusion. And I love Southwest Fusion as well. So go to the Beastro and then go to the Valley of the Gods, which is similar to Monument Valley, but it’s untouched and nearly empty.
It’s it’s like kind of an otherworldly solitude.
>> I’m sure >> very quiet and it’s kind of known for its spiritual stillness.
>> You can feel it.
>> Yeah. Very, very different.
>> And then last day, day four, lower Analopee Canyon. And I don’t know. Oh man, all these places. Like I’m I’m going through my brain of like, oh, I remember going there. So, Analopee Canyon is this narrow slot canyon that’s carved by flash floods and it’s known it’s got these beautiful sandstone curves. If you’ve seen like a a a screen saver on uh like Mac or whatever where it’s like the orange sculpted slown, that’s a word, but like really smooth curves and it’s narrow. Yep. That’s Analopee Canyon.
>> Gotcha. Okay. I know exactly what you’re talking about.
>> Light beams. Again, more spiritual significance. And this is also a place that you can only access with Navajo guides. And in a lot of these regions, that’s who I would want to take.
Absolutely.
>> I I do think there are certain like private expeditions to some canyons in the area that you can still access with an expedition outside of, but typically it’s it’s uh a Navajo leader. Uh sorry, Navajo Guide, not leader, different thing. Um and then go to Horseshoe Bend, which is a thousand foot uh overlook above a massive horseshoe shaped turn in the Colorado River. So beautiful. Best sunset I’ve ever seen.
>> Oh, I bet.
>> Just I mean, you’re on this huge overlook. You see the river. It’s just And it’s just nice also to be to realize that we haven’t industrialized everything.
>> Yeah.
>> You know, cuz humans just don’t really do a great job of showing restraint.
>> They they just like paving things.
>> Not really good.
>> Let’s pave it all and build let’s and build banks.
>> Yep. And then I would recommend Wawweep right. Waweep overlook which is another it’s a panoramic view of Lake Powell and these really colorful cliffs and this is the ones that have like the multicolored strata in them. I had to go through and like make notes and look at all my photos. Then there’s the Glen Canyon Dam overlook. This is a hidden viewpoint perched over the Colorado River. And again this this uh Glen Canyon is going to be quieter, fewer crowds than some of the main areas.
>> And I like that.
>> Um and then there’s a place called Cameron which is kind of a return stop as you’re road tripping. This is known for Navajo Tacos, which I will fight someone >> for.
>> Navajo tacos.
>> Yeah.
>> Whoa.
>> Silver jewelry and like a long trading post history as well.
>> Cool.
>> And so with a lot of those, again, I didn’t I didn’t really focus on food and drink. I like just cuz there’s so much outdoor things to see. There’s so much more outdoors and like art and creation.
Um, but if you are someone who likes the outdoors, if you’re someone who likes the desert, if you’re someone who likes road trips, that is a region of the country that if you have not been yet, by all means, like go to New Mexico and go to Arizona and go to the Grand Yeah.
But go to Navajo Nation. It is so breathtaking in a way that you you walk into some of these places like Monument Valley and uh you’re just like, what planet am I on?
>> Yeah.
>> Am I on the same place? And there is something and I know that Sedona even in Arizona has, you know, kind of the same reputation. There is something that’s deeply spiritual >> big time >> about that land and you feel that energy.
>> You feel it. You feel the shift. You feel the calmness there. There’s a a connection that happens there where you feel more connected to the earth than you do in other places.
>> Totally. And there’s quite a few places in the US that have that. But I I think that the Navajo Nation is is >> probably in my experience number one. Um but similar feelings that I felt in Arches in Utah and in um Mount Zion.
Just beautiful places.
>> Yeah.
>> And Lord knows as we, you know, enter the techracy, >> we’re going to need more time outside and >> sign me up for that. But I highly recommend it and and by all means like pick up some jewelry and just you know I I I think outside of the skinwalker creepiness which I’m still going to be thinking about that coyote. I think what I loved the most about researching this episode I I just found so much hope in in their system of belief about harmony and responsibility >> and care and honor. There’s something so beautiful about that and it’s I think that’s why their land feels the way it does.
>> Probably because I mean and that’s a system that’s been passed down for from generation to generation to gener. It’s just that’s what they’ve built their whole existence on.
>> And and it’s and it’s sad to me, you know, how much greater, you know, could that feeling be? How much more expanded could it be if it if it weren’t for, you know, colonialism and expansion and and essentially almost wiping them out >> for them to slowly rebuild? Um, but to those of you listening, don’t make fun of skinwalkers while you’re there.
>> Uh, don’t do that. Remember that.
Remember that if you are in Appalachia and something’s outside your door, not a skinwalker, but a crypted. Do not open the door.
>> Don’t open it.
>> Don’t do Don’t open the door. Um, what was your favorite part of the episode?
>> Oh man, the whole thing was great. But I mean, just learning a lot about like like you were saying about the the culture, the belief system, you know, sort of their um mindset on how they treat each other and and nature and all that, but I mean really just learning mostly about basically what the skinwalker is, >> you know? That’s that’s creepy. And even though we talked all about it, I still feel like I don’t know about it.
>> All right. Does that make sense? Yeah.
It’s like we’ve mentioned all this stuff, but yet I feel like Yeah, I still don’t know what it is.
>> And what do you think was the scariest thing?
>> Oh, dude, that the face with the eyes that I was telling.
>> See, that’s But like honestly, what’s that’s scary that’s the scariest to me in the moment. What’s bothering me >> is the locks on both sides of the door.
>> Yeah, >> that’s what’s bothering me.
>> Yeah. At at the the ranch house, definitely. And and I feel like Skinwalker Ranch is it’s really its own >> We can do our own episode on >> There’s so much to it.
>> Just Skinwalker Ranch. so much.
>> And one of the things that Yeah. Like I feel like, oh, I know so much about it and I know nothing.
>> Yeah.
>> Um, and just random book recommendation.
If like if you’re somebody who’s really interested in kind of Native American lore, you like horror, kind of western themed, one of the best books I read last year was The Buffalo Hunter Hunter.
>> Oh, okay.
>> Which is a it’s a horror book set in like settlement Montana.
>> And it’s really interesting. It is one of the coolest It is one of the coolest takes on a vampire story.
>> Interesting.
>> That I’ve ever heard.
>> Okay.
>> Um ever heard ever read. Uh so if you’re if you’re a reader and that’s the kind of vibe you like, I would highly recommend that book. And >> yeah, I’m not I’m I’m going to be checking that one out. I It checked all the boxes of things I like.
>> And this was also this was we were mentioning this before we recorded. This was such a nice break from Child Predators.
>> Yeah.
>> Like it’s just >> it did.
>> There’s so many of them.
>> It’s like all of them.
>> Oh man. Thank you so much again to everyone who helped us get monetized here on Highway to Hell. If you would like to become a Helen to support the show, bonus content, ad free episodes, sign up at Highway to Hellodcast on patreon.com and we will see you next week on Highway to Hell. Thanks guys.