This happened to me when I was a kid, probably 11.
I haven't told anyone this story because we aren't suppose to talk about them in my culture.
If you talk about them they gain an attraction towards you and focus on you more.
For clarification, I am a Native American Male, Apache and Navajo, from Arizona and
my Navajo side is from Albuquerque, NM.
I somewhat know what they are and know about them.
We take them very seriously if one is spotted and even the Navajo police will come out to
investigate the area.
Anyway, onto my story about when I saw one.
My family and I live in Arizona and we occasionally visit our Navajo family in Albuquerque, NM.
We left early to get there by noon or less, it is a very long and boring trip there.
But we get there before noon and we have time to mess around and talk with our extended
family.
And we, kids, start to play around til the evening starts to show.
The house is too small for everyone to fit in and sleep in.
Some of the kids have to sleep in the trailer and truck camper but two of my cousins and
I had the amazing luck of sleeping in the old slightly torn tent.
It's night time now, around 8 pm, and all of us get ready for bed.
We are well asleep at this point and for some unknown reason I wake up.
Of course I'm still tired and rubbing my eyes while yawning, meaning I wasn't well aware
of my surroundings.
Once I finish rubbing my eyes, I look straight at the entrance of the tent and see a figure,
illuminated by the back light porch, standing in front of the tent.
At first I was scared but thought it was my other cousins just messing with us.
As I was thinking this, I thought why would they go through this much trouble of staying
up late, to have the off chance of us waking up and seeing them.
As this person was still standing outside our tent, looking at us, I turn to one of
my older cousins who was 2 years older than me, to wake him up and tell him that someone
was standing outside our tent.
He tries to brush me off but I persist and he turns to me and asks what I wanted.
I tell him to look at the entrance of the tent and he does.
I never seen someone go from the brink of sleep to sheer panic and alertness in their
eyes that fast before.
He looks at me with this panic face and tells me to be quiet.
He whispers to me that its a skin walker and that we need to be quiet again.
We lay there for the longest time and from my memory it was at least an hour or more.
We were just about to go back to sleep because it hadn't done anything.
Then it started to walk around the tent, in a pace insanely slow that it kept us up.
Remember when I said this was an old tent?
Yeah, it had some holes in it.
One of the holes was the size of a quarter and I decided to be "brave."
As it continues to walk around the tent a fourth time, I slowly crawl towards the hole
and try to take a look.
As I did this my cousin told me to get back to bed or it'll hurt us, of course as a kid
I ignore this warning.
I am at the quarter size hole and looking out to see whatever it was.
It comes around the hole and what I saw was bone chilling.
When I looked out that hole, I saw what I believe to be a skin walker.
Well its lower half and not its face, thank God.
What I saw was dirt/coal covered legs and some kind of make shift animal pelt.
I bolt back and hide under my sleeping bag while my cousin did the same.
This thing decided to stop moving and start looking at us again, as if it knew that I
saw it and was letting me know.
Now it continues to stand there again and watch us.
I hid under the covers until I spent every ounce of energy being scared, and finally
feel asleep.
I woke up early, maybe around five, and I decided to look outside the tent to see if
there was anything there.
I see footprints...bare footprints, that send shivers throughout my body.
I saw the footprints move around the tent, this hit me hard because I was now realizing
it wasn't a dream.
As I further investigate the footprints, I notice that it went off track.
It went off to the rocky hills nearby where we were staying at.
I follow the track to the hills, about a football field away from the house.
As I continue to follow the tracks, something strange and scary happens.
It goes from two footprints walking for a while, to footprints and hand prints in the
dirt starting to form.
I found that kinda strange because no person would do that out here.
As I followed the tracks further in the hills, the hands and feet started to get smaller
and smaller, this is when I started to get scared again.
It subtlety changed into coyote paw prints.
That is when I stopped and turned back home, first walking fast then onto a full on run.
When I got back, I sat down on the back porch for a while and thought about telling my family
but I didn't think they would believe me.
In the end I didn't tell anyone, even the cousin I woke up in the middle of the night.
Because it seemed outlandish and sounded like what a kid would tell to get attention.
Well, that's my story, I urge you guys not to go into the Navajo Reservation to go looking
for them.
You will bite off more than you can chew.
We, my people, take these beings very seriously and do our best to not talk about them.
Even though I broke this code, I just thought to warn you guys about them.
Yes, you and whoever is listening are the first people to hear this story.
I have a few more stories to tell if you'd like to hear.
But this is by far the most scariest story I had to tell.
I was a kid when this happened...
My uncle and I were finishing up chopping/gathering firewood for my grandmother because it was
getting dark.
Driving back on a dirt road at about 30mph (give or take 5mph) I had this awful sense
of being watched.
Before I could turn to look out my window (passenger side) my uncle quickly shouted,
"Don't!"
I completely froze.
My heart felt like it was beating out of my chest then completely stopped when I heard
a tap tap on my window.
My uncle sped up and was loudly praying in my native language.
I didn't know what was going on and thought it was over till our truck suddenly dipped
from the bed.
My uncle then started saying, "Look at me" and "Don't turn away" over and over.
Then I heard it again, tap tap but from the window behind me.
It was getting harder for me to breathe and I wanted to cry.
A minute or two passed and the truck dipped again.
My uncle looked around and sighed.
It was quiet besides the truck and the road.
He looked at me and said, "We will ask your father to do a prayer in the morning.
So the evil will forget our faces."
(Navajo to English equivalent).
I remember curling up on the seat and just staring at the radio watching the time.
Listening to my uncle sing an old prayer till we got to my grandmother's house.
Let me preface this by saying I'm generally not very superstitious, but I do have my fair
share of experiences that have made me a little closer to believing in the supernatural.
I recently learned about Skinwalkers, and this experience came back to me when I learned
what they were.
I'm a boy scout, currently 14 years old.
This experience happened about 2 years ago, right after I joined boy scouts..
My troop was on a camp out somewhere out in the country, and there were woods on one side
of us, and fields on all others.
The first day and night passed by as normal, playing around, cooking food and trying to
cope with having no service.
The second day was... different.
A lot of the scouts had gone out on a hike for a requirement, so they would be gone for
at least 2 hours.
I didn't have much to do, so I walked over by the stream by the woods and sat down.
Amidst my aimless rock-throwing and life-contemplating, I began to gaze into the woods.
I wasn't expecting to see anything other than squirrels or birds, but I saw one of the scouts
who had gone out on the hike.
They hadn't been gone for more than 5 minutes, so I was assuming he was taking a bathroom
break before the hike.
I yelled "Hey (name)!" and waved at him.
I could tell he heard me, because he turned his head toward me, but when he did it was
a very jerky motion.
Now, I didn't see much wrong with this.
I just thought he was startled, however it was somewhat odd that his head just snapped
directly toward me.
He didn't say anything, and turned back and walked into the woods.
That also didn't raise any suspicion, because I just assumed he didn't want to be witnessed
relieving himself.
Later that night, most of the scouts and leaders had gone into their tents to sleep.
However, my friend and I were still both sitting at a table we had set up and talking.
This was when I saw something walking upright about 100 yards away, up on a hill.
It looked like the guy I had seen earlier in the woods.
I suddenly stopped talking and looked at it, following it intently with my eyes trying
to see where it would go.
My friend turned and looked, but later said he didn't see anything.
The actual scout was in his tent, I had seen him go in earlier.
I brushed it off as me just seeing things, and we eventually went to bed.
The next morning, we all packed up and waited for our parents.
I had the urge to pee, so I went back near the woods.
After I finished, I took one last look at the woods.
I saw the boy again.
He was staring straight at me.
His eyes were glassy and glossed over.
He said nothing, and turned around and walked into the woods, moving like a robot.
I immediately ran back to the group, but told nobody.
This is the first time I have told anyone this story.
I don't know what the thing that looked like my friend was, but whatever it was I know
it wasn't human.
My family owns a farm in the heart of a Indian reservation.
One winter I was home for Christmas taking care of the farm while my parents were away
Christmas shopping.
As I was home by myself, way late in the night and I hear all our cows freaking out.
I knew it had to be the wild dogs that are rampant in the area.
So I throw on some boots, grab a shotgun, load it up, and head out to the field.
This was a perfect scenario for a horror movie, it was cloudy but there was full moon, and
it was breaking through the clouds, making it just right to light up all the snow.
I ran out into the middle of the field, and just in time I see two giant dogs, they were
standing up facing each other and fighting.
I think "perfect two for one."
So I pump a shell into the chamber of Mr. 12 gauge and then it happened.
The two dogs heard the rack, they both stopped, looked over at me, and ran away, ON THEIR
BACK LEGS.
Immediately I froze, and every ghost story about Skinwalkers and all the other Native
legends I grew up with flew through my mind.
Keep in mind I am a white guy, and up until then, these were all just boogie man stories
the Native kids like to tell to scare us.
That night, they became real to me.
So I live in Colorado and absolutely love the outdoors.
I know a lot of random, out of the way places which are rather secluded.
One of my favorite spots to go just so happens to be the least frequented trail I've ever
been on.
Me and my friends have seen rattlesnakes, mountain lions, and elk in this area.
None of which you want to walk up on and scare but we've never feared for our safety here.
That changed one summer day.
Me and my friend Anthony decided this particular place would be a great spot to build a hut
of sorts to hang out in, smoke pot, and shoot the shit.
The trail starts out on the other side of a river that's knee deep in the right spots
and we get across just fine.
As we were drying off our feet and putting our boots back on, a ranger was coming down
the hill.
The look on his face was a peculiar mix of confusion and something we couldn't quite
put our fingers on.
He stopped to talk to us and asked "What are you boys doing up here?"
We were caught off guard by the simple fact that he was here.
In the ten or fifteen times we've hiked this spot we've only seen others two of the times.
"Were just going for a hike, are we trespassing?"
I asked curiously because of his accusing tone and the fact that it was an unmarked
trail off the side of the road.
"No, no.
I just rarely see people here.
You boys be safe up there..."
He seemed like he wanted to say something else, but we got the feeling he wanted to
leave fast as he was saying this as he started wading across the river, paying no mind to
taking off his boots or socks.
We quickly forgot about this as we headed up the 45 degree incline that the trail started
out on.
We continued up through a box canyon and slowly made it up the trail.
When we got about half way up the trail we decided to veer off of it to find a spot to
build our hut at.
Around a mile off of the trail we came up on a large granite outcropping with a small
ravine right through the middle.
This was as good a spot as any and we started clearing the ground.
For about an hour we dug out a foundation and started gathering wood for the structure.
We had the ground works of a mini lodge and decided to make it partially underground.
We dug down about a foot and a half and hit a sheet of rock.
My shovel struck the rock first and in about a second an intense vibration starting in
my hands spread through my body.
I looked over at Anthony and watched as his shovel struck the rock.
It was easy to tell that we were experiencing the same sensation.
It took all of my will power to let go of the shovel and the instant my grip loosened
it stopped.
We were awestruck at what just transpired.
As I looked at Anthony completely dumbfounded I saw a large, lanky figure on top of the
outcropping.
It's ill proportioned arm jutted out with what I imagine was it's finger pointing in
the direction we came from.
I yelled for us to get out of here and we instantly started running.
This is the one time in my life I ever feared for my life.
Ever.
We made it down to the river in fifteen, twenty minutes.
It normally took an hour.
Once we hit the shore we caught our breaths and collected our thoughts.
"Did you see that shit, dude?!"
I basically yelled.
"I think I'm looking at it right now..."
He choked out.
I turned around and saw it standing on the ridge seemingly staring at us.
It was odd how dark the area around it was, the sun was shining with barely any clouds
in the sky and yet it seemed that the darkness was embracing it.
I looked back at Anthony and he had the same look on his face as the ranger did.
That was two years ago and I have yet to go back, since then I refuse to hike solo anywhere.
I guess that goes to show that you don't know what the hell is out there and you need to
respect the wilderness because you might just piss something off.