Original subtitles

-[indistinct chatter] -[whooshing]

[low-pitched whirring]

-[white noise] -[man] ...Channel 4 News at 4:00--

[white noise]

[suspenseful music playing]

[white noise]

[wind blowing]

[whirring]

[eerie music]

[man] How they could turn in-- they could just be, like, a regular human being.

Like the person that you probably bumped into

might've been a skinwalker, might've have been a medicine man,

might've been just a regular person.

They could be regular people, you don't even know it.

And how they turn into the animals...

...by killing the person you love most.

[Brenda] We're told not to talk about the, uh, skinwalkers.

It's a-- it's like a bad taboo.

Or any kind of cryptid. The things that I've just mentioned,

we're told not to talk about.

The big bigfoot, the skinwalker, the gargoyles,

all that stuff that's-- that surround the area,

we're told not to talk about it. Um, why? We've asked why,

and they just-- it's, it's a bad omen.

Navajo witchcraft is one of the most...

...scariest witchcrafts I've ever been around.

That was just way, way different.

Don't talk about skinwalker.

Who are they? What are they?

How do they walk through the ethers?

Why do you wanna know?

They're people that got stuck

or they're people being used for witchcraft.

Are they between-world things?

Are they things? I don't know.

And I don't want them hanging around me either.

[white noise]

[sharp clicks]

[ominous music]

[distant howling]

[suspenseful music]

There's a lot of history here, a lot of, uh, strange things here.

There's famous murders that took place in, uh, 1974

here in Chokecherry Canyon

that, uh, involved some tribal magic

and some curses that were flung about.

The, the Navajo, or the Diné, as they prefer,

uh, Navajo is actually a name given to them by the Ute...

[indistinct chatter]

...but, uh, they, they're still known as the Navajo

and it's called the Navajo Nation Reservation.

That's the biggest presence here,

which have the Ute and the Sleeping Ute

just up the road going toward Colorado.

There's Pueblos, there's the Aztecs,

there's all kinds of ones that I couldn't think of.

Everything is basically Navajo here, anyway.

There're several stories that have happened in that area.

Farmington is kind of a hotbed of supernatural happenings.

There was a few UFO crashes in the area.

Aztec had one, Farmington had one that was pretty hush-hush.

Farmington is very rich in Native American culture.

It is-- Shiprock is right there,

it's about 40 minutes west of Farmington,

and it's the largest Indian reservation in North America.

[Steve] And there's a strangeness in, in the mountains there.

Anywhere there's tribal lands,

you're gonna run into some things that you don't understand,

that, that you're not meant to understand

because it doesn't have anything to do with you.

I'm part Cherokee. There's, there's certain things

that you don't talk about. The elders of the tribe

will admonish you for talking about

or even thinking about, in some cases,

some of these, uh, creatures because that can draw it to you,

it gives an energy to, to bring it to you.

[suspenseful music]

[Sandy] A lot of people believe that,

especially in the Chokecherry area,

that it may have been either a cursed area

or it could've been a burial area.

And there are a lot of those that they're finding in Farmington now,

burial areas that they didn't know about.

Out there, there have been--

there's a witches' circle out there, uh,

lots of sacrifices have taken place out there.

And, yes, there are skinwalker stories.

A lot of Native Americans say that that land is cursed

and that, uh, because of the evil

that has been done on the soil out there,

that it's, it's a cursed patch of earth.

And there's a lot of Native Americans

that will not go out there at all.

To me, a skinwalker, it's, it's a Navajo, um, tradition

or a legend, if you will.

It's something that, uh, it can take on any form.

Hence the, the skinwalker name.

It can, uh, disguise itself as, uh,

many kinds of animals or even people.

It can even mimic a loved one.

To me, dog-man more falls in line

-with the European werewolf legends. It's a changeling... -[howling]

...it's something that changes from one thing to another.

And depending on the version of that,

I think it's a little different with the Navajo

than it is, say, the Ute or the Sleeping Ute.

I think the dog-man, it's just that.

It's, it's, it's a dog-man,

whereas he doesn't have the ability to change

into other creatures like a skinwalker does.

So they could even mimic your family member,

they can-- uh, I've heard it called stealing a face,

where they can then take on somebody else.

Well, in the, the, the most popular telling of the legend,

it's somebody who's tasted human flesh,

uh, that, that's like an automatic way to get it.

But then, it can also be put on you by a shaman

or a medicine man, somebody that you've angered in some way.

It can be put on you that way.

There's a lot of tribal magic out here

and a lot of, uh, curses and, and things like that.

And again, it depends on the tribe

as to what they are and how serious.

But from the Navajo, the Diné that I've talked to,

there's some serious magic that they have access to,

their shamans and their medicine men.

[ominous music]

[suspenseful music]

I am Sandy Lewis and my encounter happened

in Farmington, New Mexico.

[eerie music]

When we were teenagers, we had an area out in Chokecherry.

Back then, we would go get pallets,

um, and have bonfires, um, late at night.

[fire crackling]

There's a big wash in that area too.

So, a wash in the desert is just an area of sand

where water will come through when there's runoff.

So we're standing around, all talking one night

and have a bonfire going.

[eerie music]

Off in the distance, down the wash,

we could see a light.

A couple of friends pointed out,

"Hey, that light's getting kind of closer and,

and it's only one light."

So, okay, maybe a four-wheeler, a motorcycle.

And, um, as we're standing talking,

the light is advancing, advancing, advancing,

and we didn't hear a motor,

which should've been our first clue

that it wasn't a vehicle.

Pretty soon, you could tell it was somebody walking

that's carrying kind of like this lantern-type light.

So that was weird too.

So there's this little old lady.

[ominous music]

So she approaches and is asking people for a ride.

So my friends, Trish and Kelly,

asked where she lived, and she was very vague about it,

she just said, uh, she needed a ride up to NAPI,

which is the, uh, Navajo Agricultural Area

west of Farmington.

[suspenseful music]

They're kind of driving along.

It's probably two o'clock in the morning,

and she just abruptly says, "Pull off here."

They're literally-- there's no lights.

It's a big open field, there's no other traffic around,

there's no other people around. And Trish says, "Are you sure?

You know, are you sure you wanna get out here?"

She says, "Yeah, I'll, I'll just walk from here."

So Trish and Kelly get back in

and they're, they're just kind of sitting,

watching her just walk across this field.

There's no road there,

she's just walking across this field.

The light kind of just disappears off into the distance

and they're like, "Wow, that was really weird, right?"

And so they're kind of just sitting there discussing that

when the, the light abruptly just goes out.

All of a sudden, they can see something moving,

coming towards them at a fast pace now.

And before they could even get out of their mouth

what they were seeing to each other,

this dog, huge dog,

comes running out in front and sit--

it just stands in front of their truck.

The dog was like a wolf-type dog and it was big.

She said it was huge.

She had a lifted truck,

and the dog was able to, like, on all fours,

not very far away from the truck,

probably just a few feet away from the truck, on all fours,

look, look at them almost in the eye.

And so she starts the truck,

and they look and now the dog is gone.

And so, they go to pull out onto the highway

and the lady is now standing there

and she looks much older.

Gray hair, long gray hair,

um, has on, uh, period clothing

from probably mid to late 1800s.

She had the same color eyes, same facial structure,

she was just aged and aged by years.

She said, "If I had to guess an age,

she was probably in her eighties or nineties."

She-- and she's just standing there staring at them.

And Trish is so freaked out,

she doesn't even know what to do.

Kelly's yelling at her to go, "Just get on the road! Go!"

And she says, you know, Trish's like, "I can't go. She's standing in my way."

And so she goes to back up

and they look again,

the lady has now gone from the front of the vehicle

to behind the vehicle.

[suspenseful music]

So, Trish hits the gas,

they get back onto the road,

she goes to turn around,

and now there's a dog standing in the middle of the road,

it's just kind of sitting there staring at them.

[echoing howling]

She said, "We, we just swerved around the dog

and we just got down the road."

She said, "We went back to my house."

So they get up the next morning.

[stutters] Kelly asked Trish to take her home.

They, they go out to the truck,

and on the passenger side,

you could see down the passenger side of the truck

where something-- with-- claw marks

all down the passenger side of her truck.

She took Kelly home

and they swore to never talk about it again.

Trish, however, shared their, their experience

with the rest of the group, and we all kind of agreed that,

um, it was probably a skinwalker

that she had given a ride to that night.

And the, the shape-shifting

from the older lady to the animal,

i-- we kind of got a feel that that--

and the way they told the story, they were never separate,

it was one or the other.

There-- the dog wasn't ever there with the lady.

It was one or the other.

And so, that led me to believe,

and several others, that it was probably a skinwalker.

[somber music]

[suspenseful music]

-[white noise] -Uh, my name is Susy K. Ashcroft.

We're in Albuquerque, New Mexico,

and I have some stories that I want out there

before anything else happens.

[eerie music]

The main stories are about the reservation.

I was raised on the reservation, o-- on the Navajo Reservation.

You know, my grandparents were born in the 1880s.

They, they were born right after the Indian Wars.

So-- and grandma was Paiute and dark

and granddad was redhead and blue-eyed.

That was kind of a combination.

And, um, you know,

back in those days, there was lots of discrimination.

So they hid out on the res mostly.

That's where they made their business

and the people treated them good.

Well, the people have always treated me good.

It was our home, that was where we were for generations.

The Hatches and the Ashcrofts have been out there

since-- I don't know when.

Y-- all, all the time.

[music continues]

You know, we were just ditzing around being teenagers

in beautiful downtown Gallup.

We were out at, uh, Church Rock.

It was after 1970, I'm not sure of the date,

but my friend and I were in college by then.

We'd come home for break.

And we were up at Church Rock, we always went up there.

We wandered around. We'd, you know,

sit on a rock and watch the sunset

or smoke a cigarette or do something.

And we walked all the way. We got up there

and we walked all the way around

the church, the rock.

And there's two big dips when you're walking up there,

you gotta go up and then down this big old dip and then back up,

and then you can walk around the, the...

...the rock, the big rock.

But there's two big rocks sitting on either side of that dip.

And we were coming down the dip like we knew what we were doing

and we started to cross a little spring

and I could see where our footprints--

you know when you first step in water

and in, in sand,

you're gonna muddy it.

Well, after it washes out some,

you can see footprints. Well, our footprints were there,

and there was a footprint as about as big as my hand of a dog.

And I saw it, and it-- it was coming after us,

not before us, but after us.

And I told Linda, "Look." And she goes,

"We'd better go." And I said, "Okay."

You know, on reservation towns, you get all of these stories

and tales of, of the reservation.

And most of them aren't true, but a lot of them are folklore

and we don't know for sure if they are or not.

And the werewolf is one.

Wherever we were, there could've been one.

And, um... so we just grew to accept it.

Really, kind of didn't believe it, but kind of did.

You know? And so we were aware,

and Linda and I that day were aware.

[eerie music]

And so, we started taking off, we went right back around the mount,

we started going down the dip.

And I realized Linda wasn't with me.

And I looked back up the dip and she's frozen sto-- solid.

And about that time, I saw a brown blurb

run from one rock to another.

It ran just almost like us.

It kind of, like, took the first start with a leap

'cause he was scrunched down when I saw it--

to a leap when he jumped up and he took off.

But then he was running just like us.

And he was so quick. I bet he only took two, two, two...

...lengths of legs

going across there to get across, you know?

I mean, he, he was a big guy,

but he was brown, hairy.

And I, I looked at her, and her, she was just like this.

And she's, she was, uh--

oh, I hope I get it right!

She was Sioux from Oklahoma.

And she knows the superstitions like I do too.

And-- so, you know, we just knew to get the heck out of there.

You don't go back up there, you don't disturb something

that's kind of living in the, in the between-worlds.

You don't disturb them, you leave them be.

After I saw him, I was out of there in a heartbeat.

You know, and there's hills and things,

you gotta go up and down to get out of there.

But I was already in the car and turned it around

by the time Linda got there.

You know, I, I mean, it terrified me.

[ominous music]

I've never ever been back up there.

I don't know if he was a skinwalker.

Don't talk about those.

[somber music]

Who are they? What are they?

How do they walk through the ethers? Why do you wanna know?

I don't wanna know.

And I don't want them hanging around me either.

I don't know what they are.

Are they between-world things?

[ominous music]

Are they things?

What are they? I don't know.

The religiosity about them or,

or whatever the culture you wanna think about,

they're people that got stuck or they're people being used for witchcraft.

Navajo witchcraft is one of the most...

...scariest witchcrafts I've ever been around.

And I've been-- you know, when you're a mental health therapist,

you have, you have a lot of...

[laughs] occult experiences, if you will.

And, um,

so I, I've been around, but that was just way, way different.

[somber music]

[man] Yeah, I was born and raised here, born in Shiprock.

My life, I'm usually just waking up,

go to my farm, check on the cows. That's about it.

[eerie music]

[man] Me and my dad, not too long ago, had a talk about how our, um,

I mean, how our culture is really important to us.

Uh, my mom's clan is Tl'aashchi'i.

My dad's clan is, uh, Ashiihi.

Uh, Tl'aashchi'i means, um, uh, Red Cheek People.

It-- and Naakáí diné'i' is, um,

what do you call-- it's, like, supposed to be meaning, uh, Mexican people.

That's what it means.

Oh, my grandpa is Ashiihi.

Um, acheii is, um, grandpa.

And Ashiihi is, um, Salt People.

[music continues]

Down here, we have skinwalkers.

How they could turn in-- they could just be, like, the regular human being.

Like the person that you probably bumped into

might've been a skinwalker, might've been a medicine man,

might've been just a regular person.

They could be regular people. You don't even know it.

And how they turn into the animals?

You gotta wear the skin of the animal that they choose.

They could be a coyote, they could be a deer,

they could be a buffalo, whatever.

[growling]

"How do they become a skinwalker?"

That's the most frequent question I always get.

Part of how you beco-- like, the biggest one

is by killing the person you love most.

[echoing screaming]

[squelching]

[man] Like, you would do anything for them.

You gotta kill them.

Take them to a ceremony, do the rest of it.

I don't know the rest of it. I never interviewed a skinwalker,

nor do I even want to encounter another one.

[eerie music]

Um, that was actually a very recent experience

when I was in Skinwalker Canyon.

A lot of people say nothing happens there.

In the begin-- at the opening of the canyon,

it's like, really wide and open. But the more you get into it,

the more it kind of gets more narrower

and narrower and narrower.

And that was just-- the more you go in,

the more it's, like, less uneven soil.

And that's probably the best I could put it.

When me and my buddies got there, we were just bored,

we just got done with the car meet.

And we went down there with our cars.

As we were going down there,

one of my buddies said, "This is a bad idea."

And I said, "Don't worry, it's-- nothing ever happens here."

We were supposed to go to the cave that's over there.

[suspenseful music]

Walking around, we got to going deeper and deeper into the canyon,

and I just smelled something very putrid, something very bad.

I look in front of me, we had these high-power military flashlights.

We were looking around, and I just see this,

this giant... being.

And I-- it's probably about seven, eight feet tall, maybe.

And you've seen the skull of a deer head, right?

Its face was just, like, decomposed, sunken eyes,

giant antlers.

And it ju--

and I could just see, like, how many scars it had on its chest.

I could see its arms just extremely long and lanky.

It looked like it hasn't-- it looked like it just got done killing something

because blood was dripping off of its-- off of its snout.

[ominous music]

[man] It looked like half of it was decomposed and...

...it was down on all two legs.

Some people say might've been a wendigo.

They liv-- wendigos live up north with the D-- Lakotas.

It looked right at us and I had my, um, my gun with me.

I usually have it on my-- I usually have it with me wherever I go.

I know my bullets wouldn't kill it,

but I know it would've hurt it.

And that skinwalker was just too close for comfort.

I grabbed it, took about three shots at--

I just heard this high-pitched scream.

[high-pitched scream]

It was very high-pitched. We covered our ears and it was like--

it was kind of like a guttural gr-- growl,

kind of like a dog, kind of, kind of like that.

It looked like it didn't do anything,

but I just noticed that it put its, like, claw

or hand over like this,

and just, like, got back on its all threes

and then just ran away for a little bit.

Probably to get more skinwalkers, maybe,

'cause we just smelled more and more...

...of that rotten smell.

I just see it run and I told my buddies,

"We gotta get out of here."

We just ran and ran and ran,

and we just smelled that smell of dead rotten flesh.

It was just, it just stung our noses, it was making us cry.

We were just running as fast as we could.

[somber continues]

[suspenseful music]

I am Victoria Andersen

and the encounter happened in my backyard in New Mexico.

[ominous music]

There's definitely shape-shifter leg-- legends...

...throughout the state,

but notoriously north of us.

However, you know, there, there are rumors

that, you know, there's--

those are kind of common in New Mexico... [chuckling]

...and New Mexico does have

a very high missing persons rate.

Um, I don't know specifically about Rio Rancho,

but New Mexico, in general,

does have a, a very high missing persons rate.

[music continues]

Uh, there's a neighbor of mine who did-- worked wildlife and...

...he says there could be things not...

...you know, uh, wanting to be talked about.

The Rio Rancho area has only been developed

in the last maybe 30, 40 years tops.

So who knows what could, could be there.

It was nighttime, it was probably around 11:30,

and we were gonna let our dogs out

for their one last time for the night.

It was normally a little bit later

than I preferred to do it,

but for some reason they, they seemed anxious.

So we decided to let them out,

thinking they had to do their business

before we pretty much close up the house

for the evening and everybody goes to bed.

So I let them out and within probably a few minutes

-there was a fight going on with one of my dogs... -[echoing barking]

...and...

...the two other dogs ran into the house

just, just horribly frightened.

I went back to see what was going on with the third dog

and looked like either some wolf

or some coyote thing,

I don't know what it was. It was big.

It wasn't quite... coyote,

it wasn't quite a wolf, it was very big,

and it had, uh, the third dog in its mouth... [chuckles]

...um, ready to leap over the fence with him.

So here was this extra big whatever.

Like I said, it kind of looked like a wolf,

but it was, but it was brown

and it was big.

Uh, I mean, it was dark.

But... there was a, a--

like I said, a difference besides the size

and I couldn't quite identify what specific animal.

It did have a translucent kind of feel for it.

And I wasn't sure if that was just the lighting,

but I-- I would really-- if, if you wanna know the truth,

I think, uh, there was more to it

and it, it didn't have a full solid form.

They have a little, again, a little flicker.

I mean, I couldn't tell you what color the eyes are,

but I just knew it was, uh, you know, very aggressive

and it didn't seem like it wanted to stop with the dog.

Even with my presence,

[suspenseful music]

Other than having a-- some wild thing with your dog...

[chuckles] I mean, that's pretty--

but I think there's an element of extra--

um, adrenaline went through because I didn't know what I was dealing with.

I-- like it says, when you, you can't identify what it is,

it's like, "Is it a coyote? It's too big to be a coyote.

It's too--" It di-- it wasn't even fitting a wolf.

I mean, it had, like, scraggly coyote fur,

but I know it wasn't a coyote.

It didn't really look like a wolf 'cause it was--

uh, the structure of it was different.

I-- just that unknowing

of what exactly are you dealing with,

that you, you try to-- you have microseconds to try to process and then react.

And my fear was he was gonna take Jojo.

[chuckles] He was gonna take Jojo and nobody was gonna stop it.

I didn't, I didn't let it get that close. [laughs]

Thankfully. Um, but I didn't--

you know, after the incident, the dog was pretty traumatized.

So I didn't really investigate.

I inspected to see,

you know, what kind of damage-- what was done.

I mean, there was puncture wounds in it.

So, I would think at some point it was physical,

but it did have a weird... kind of exterior,

and it's like-- it was fur

but it was like a gray or brown.

But it did have,

at least, when the light was shining on it,

a weird translucentness.

[suspenseful music]

Uh, my name is, uh, Wes Chapman. We're in San Juan County.

The city is Farmington, New Mexico.

So in this, in the--

like, this is me learning more about the area.

And looking back, this area is riddled with all kinds of stuff.

There's stories of all kinds of different portals,

things coming out of dimension stuff,

uh, ghost stuff that I don't even mess with.

If you can't put a bullet in it, I don't wanna mess with it.

[upbeat suspenseful music]

I'm basically going home from a date.

Uh, after, you know,

s-- saying my, "I love you," whatever.

Uh, it turned into a frightening event for me that,

um, I'll basically remember forever.

Came home from a date, said my goodbyes,

noticed something in the neighbor's yard

where they-- mm,

I wanna say 4'10", pushing five-foot-tall fence,

maybe five?

A dog-looking creature.

The creature that I saw,

first thing that popped in my head was a big dog.

[music continues]

Sort of like a-- an Anubis

'cause it had, like, the, the head was so similar

to, like, a Great Dane, but not boxy.

It was kind of pointed.

And the...

...like, the fur wasn't, like, necessarily, like,

like a, like a furry dog, you know?

There was, like, a bunch of hairs on it.

It wasn't like, you know, like,

"I'm an Egyptian-god-looking thing." Like, it had--

you know, it-- beefy.

The fingers were...

...Werewolves in London comes to mind,

where you have, like, the musculature,

like, on the fingers coming out,

and you slowly have, like, these, like, talon-like nails,

a little bit more pronounced than, like, a dog-dog.

Somewhat like a-- you know, like a-- you have bodybuilder,

and you have, like, their-- the short squatty neck.

But then you have someone that's, like, tall and lanky

and their neck's really long, like, kind of abnormally long.

That's kind of what it looked like.

The, the eyes...

...they were very, like, you know, like a predator,

you're gonna see, like, a green, a greenish hue

whenever, like, you shine the light.

Like, you see the reflection from the light in the back

from the streetlight shining down through the tree,

and you see it on its eye. It was like,

like a silverish, like a flicker almost.

Like, i-- it's real hard for me to describe other than that.

Like, it's, it's very--

like... [chuckles] it's there.

[music continues]

So it was on the street,

regular paved street neighborhood.

Um, probably...

...I'd say maybe 30 feet from me,

where I was at t-- getting dropped off.

Um, it's in the middle of town,

which at the time, thinking back,

and I've been thinking about this for a long time,

it might have resulted in, uh,

something following me from hanging out with one of my friends.

[ominous music]

My buddy has been haunted by something for a very long time.

We've gone camping with him, and this is the only time I--

I, I ever went camping with him.

Uh, it was just an overnight towards Albuquerque way.

The similar instances that we ha-- that I had

from hanging out with him, and then...

...what happened to me

make me believe that something was...

...following him,

picked another target,

and then-- 'cause-- if it were a animal,

like a real animal,

and it was wanting to hunt a prey,

it don't matter.

Like, y-- you take a bear, bear is a carnivore,

they're also cannibalistic. They're gonna come through a window.

So, whether it was my grandparents' belief in their religion,

um, or, you know, something keeping that from coming across,

I couldn't tell you.

[music continues]

And then, as the event continued,

I started noticing hands and--

that it was more humanoid than bipedal.

Um...

...in fear, taking off back to my house,

watching in terror out the window,

trying to see if I can find it.

Uh, loading a gun just to be on the safe side

'cause I know you can cut down a tree.

[chuckles] Uh--

So, the creature that I'd seen did seem flesh and blood

to me at that point in time in life.

S-- being there, seeing it from about 20 feet away

to where I was at,

it seemed like a living, breathing...

...creature of some sort. It looked very similar

to a dog-man, a werewolf,

um, skinwalker,

whatever type of culture you wanna call it,

that, that-- it felt real to me.

"Is it gonna eat me?"

[music continues]

The only nightmares I had was something I called the coyote-man.

Um, it showed me things in my dreams.

I know it sounds very kooky and crazy

and I'm not... [chuckling] any of that.

Um, J.C. and a couple of people

are the only ones I ever told this to.

But it would show me what Farmington looked like

before it was Farmington.

Like, when it was just cottonwoods.

It was like the craziest dream, it was just cottonwoods.

And then how the cottonwoods slowly were cut down

and then the orchards were all throughout here.

And then that was cut down, the housing development,

it was the most bizarre thing I've ever encountered.

It also showed me where a fort was off the San Juan.

There's a, a fort out there

that is... supposedly a Mormon,

um, bringing captives from the Spaniards,

which there's a big old fight about that.

That's a whole other subject.

But other than that, just the coyote-man.

Like, I had a similar feeling of what that creature was

because of the silhouette, 'cause I never got to see

what it looked like in the dream.

But the silhouette looked very similar to it.

[dramatic music]

-[beeping] -[whirring]

[suspenseful music]

My name is LaVonne Sherman. We're at the El Rancho,

um, Hotel-- Motel in Gallup, New Mexico.

[ethereal chiming]

[light ominous music]

[wind chimes tinkling]

Uh, probably going back a couple of years. It was in October.

Um, I got off work around 10:00 p.m. at night

and there's an area up there called Quaking Aspen,

and it's after you go over some cattle guard.

I just went over that cattle guard.

I was probably going about 40,

and out of the corner of my eye I s-- on the left side,

I tr-- I just-- I saw something. But we do have elk up there,

so I've seen them hundreds of times up there

and th-- they're huge.

But when I looked, this was over seven feet tall.

[eerie music]

It looked ri-- I-- its head was turning, all I saw was just antlers.

But then, when it stood up, on my heart, just-- that was it.

I just was so scared.

I was-- probably never been that scared in my life

'cause I couldn't-- I've heard of things out here,

you know, I've lived out here all my life in New Mexico,

but I've never seen something like that.

And as I, I got just so frightened and scared

and I started speeding up.

I saw I clocked at 55, 60, and it was keeping up with me.

And then I would hit 70, and it's, it's windy through there,

and I just-- h--

by the time I got closer to where I would turn off,

I was at, at least, 75. But that, whatever it was,

it would sometimes run like a human and then like an animal.

So it would go down on fours and then pick itself back up.

And it did have antlers. They did look like a--

it looked like an elf-- elk, but it had dark brown fur.

Dark, dark, almost black fur.

And I never got a look at its eyes or anything,

I just always saw the side view of it,

just 'cause it was running beside me.

And for something to keep up with me,

and it must've ran about four miles, it kept up with me,

never stopped, never got tired.

And I was going 70 at some points,

and it just kept up with me.

[music continues]

And then, as I turned into 191, it's a dirt road,

and then another dirt road, and I didn't see it anymore

so I lost it up there. But then, when I pulled in,

my mom happened to be outside with our dogs

and I screamed at her to get in the house, "Something's out there."

And she was getting the dogs in, and as they started to go in,

they went crazy and they started barking

and they were barking at where I came in at.

And then, we just were real scared the rest of the night.

And then, about eight months after that incident,

me and my daughter were outside, our-- our dogs just kept barking and barking,

and we knew that coyotes were out there, we could hear them,

but-- so we went out and it was probably about ten o'clock at night again,

and probably by where our gate is,

there's a real tall tree out there.

And we saw something looking back at us

and just-- we thought, you know, just maybe even a cat

'cause it was kind of low,

but then, all of a sudden, you could see it stand up

and it stood over seven feet tall,

tha-- you could just literally watch it raise up

and you could see it, looked like a human again,

it had regular legs.

[eerie music]

And for-- and we, we just got so scared again

and we ran back in, we locked the doors.

The whole night our dogs wouldn't stop.

They were just barking the whole night up into the morning.

And then, we did go out and we looked,

'cause it did rain that-- earlier in the day.

And there were prints, there were prints around our trailer.

[suspenseful music]

The footprints that we saw were easily at least this big.

And it looked like it was human, human foot.

And then, just ever since then...

[panting] without the-- throughout the years,

we've seen the same kind of prints around the house.

Our dogs go crazy at night.

And then I started asking around

and people started telling us that they've seen the same thing

for years up here-- up there in McGaffey.

[ominous music]

We were-- we're Sioux, we're from South Dakota.

So to us, um, we just smoked ourselves off.

Um, we put cedar down and it kind of just--

it's left us alone ever since.

We always think of that aspect of it,

that maybe it was personally after me, but we'll never know.

I wouldn't go outside for a good year by myself.

Um, I do have to close at night.

Throughout all these years, I don't look around anymore,

I just-- and everybody asks me, "How do you do that?

How do you go home?"

'Cause al-- almost everyone around here,

they know to not go in McGaffey at night,

don't get out of your car at night.

There's no cell service up there

for a good ten miles. So when you're through there,

you're-- if something happens, that's it.

[music continues]

And I never heard of anything like it up there

up until when I started telling my story to just coworkers

and everybody is-- they knew about it.

And I was so surprised 'cause I was like,

"Wait a minute, you know-- it's been up there?"

And they said, "Tons of people have seen it.

Same exact thing."

I think about at least 20-something years

because I've had a coworker that had the same incident.

We've had people down at th-- uh, l-- um, in Fort Wingate.

It's a closed school, and they've seen it down there too.

I don't know what they would call something like that, but...

[sighs] around here, they just-- there's no name.

At least the, the Navajos were-- they call it something,

but it's in Navajo and I don't know how to say it.

But they said that it's just something up there like--

kind of like a skinwalker, that's what a lot of them have said,

that that's a skinwalker. It changes shapes and it--

and it's up there for a reason, it's--

doesn't live up there. They said sometimes they send stuff like that up there.

[suspenseful music]

Uh, my name is, uh, Brenda Harris,

and I'm in, uh, Upper Fruitland, New Mexico.

My name's, uh, Ryan Harris.

Um, we're in Upper Fruitland, New Mexico,

near the Four Corners area.

[eerie music]

I was born, uh, and raised as, um, a, a Christian.

So, um, I wasn't born-- um, I wasn't raised, um,

knowing the Navajo culture.

So I was more in, uh, learning about God

and, and stuff like that.

[somber music]

[Ryan] Um, growing up, I did live in here.

You know, it was my, my parents kind of growing up with it.

Um, we always had weird instances, like,

uh, flashing-- lights flickering,

and then scratches here and there,

footsteps in the, the house area. So, yeah.

On our property alone,

uh, we've had a bigfoot that comes through.

Also, we've, um...

...hear a strange noise sometimes, uh, i-- in this house

that we're, you know, building.

Uh, our kids would hear footsteps

or a little girl talking or, or laughing.

Also, we've also picked up something on camera,

which looks like a, a ghost-dog. "Wolf-dog" is what I call it.

I started setting up cameras after we had,

like, several footprints that were, uh,

near the streetlight.

So my first thing was to start setting up the camera.

We have a kitchen window that faces towards the north,

which would be the backyard of the house.

That was the very first thing that we caught-- I caught,

was the, the ghost-wolf.

[white noise]

[ominous music]

What makes it more-- even more interesting is it-- you could--

on the footage, it looks like it's, um, transparent,

but on the film, there's parts off frame

that you can't see in the footage.

There's a wooden shed off camera.

And it's all wooden, uh, rooftops.

So whatever-- um, you could hear it when it comes into frame

that it actually, like, sounds like dog claws

that hit the, the roof. And it jumps into frame.

And the best reference we could get,

we had a F-1-- was it a-- Ford pickup, F-150.

When it landed next to that truck, it was as tall as the truck,

the height, same height c-- as the cab.

So it was very tall and it was weird

'cause it ran across or what it looks like,

it, like, floats across the, uh, the frame

and then it just flies up into the sky.

It's a very weird, very weird thing.

[music continues]

Uh, also something that looks like,

maybe, uh, the best I can describe it is,

um, it looks like a juvenile, a very young one

that seems like it boils up from the ground.

[white noise]

[eerie music]

We've picked up a-- something that looks like a bright light.

Uh, possibly could be a UFO

that was in the back-- uh, in the backfield here.

And in that big-- uh, the bright light,

it looks like a, a figure

that starts taking its shape, looks--

to me, I call it, uh, like a glowing man

standing there with, like--

it looks like three, uh, black images standing in front of it

and on the side.

On the property that we live alone here,

we've had-- like I said, I mentioned that we've had

so much activity going on.

We found out that part of our land here was, uh,

uh, we're on a burial site.

And our next door neighbors,

they're having a lot of activity as well.

We'd come to find out that they found out

that we are partially, like, on a burial site

that's been-- that was here many, many years ago.

And that's probably, uh, the reason why we're having

so much activity here.

We're told not to talk about the, uh, skinwalkers.

It's a-- it's like a bad taboo.

Or any kind of cryptid. The things that I've just mentioned,

we were told not to talk about. The skinwalker, the gargoyles,

all that stuff that's, that's around the area,

we're told not to talk about it. Um, why? We've asked why.

And it just-- it's, it's a bad omen.

For instance, if we look at a bigfoot,

like, um, it's looking at us

and we look right straight in the eyes,

we're gonna die within seven years.

That's what, uh, some of the natives believe that.

Or something bad other than dying may happen.

A sickness may come upon you.

The same way with the, the skinwalker.

Skinwalker's a very, very touchy subject here on the reservation.

We get a lot of backlash,

you know, if we talk about that subject,

it's a very touchy subject.

I'm gonna leave that at that with that one

'cause, uh, there's so much that goes into-- to that

that, um, I, I was surprised. [chuckles]

So, yeah, we're told not to talk about that, especially that one.

[eerie music]

[Ryan] When we were building this house, it was just a,

like, just a skeletal part of it, just the foundation.

And we were living in this small trailer,

which is next to the house. Very small trailer.

What woke me up was we had this weird,

like, s-- um, screech noise. Uh, I don't know what it was, it just kind of woke me up.

And we had this-- our-- we had a husky that used to be tied up in the back,

and I noticed she was kind of, like, uh, panic barking,

like nervous barking.

So, I didn't really think of any-- anything of it.

I just kind of, like, peeked out the door, the window.

I didn't have-- I wear contacts,

so I had to do this little thing with my eyes

to kind of get a little bit of focus.

And I'd seen she was looking at something,

but she was backing away from whatever it was

at the, the length of the chain.

So she was trying to back away, but couldn't get very far away.

So I hurried up and put on my contacts,

but I only put on one side.

And I quickly opened the door and I seen--

we had these sheds in the back, and I could see something, like,

like, standing next to where she was at.

I could see, like, the bottom legs was definitely, like, fur-like,

and upper torso looked like it was just covered in fur,

but it looked like a, like a man, like it was wearing

a costume or something like that.

But it was tall, though, it was as tall as the crates

that we have sitting in the back.

It was just such a, like, a fast moment

when I opened the door and I saw it.

And I couldn't tell you, like, if it had horns or not

because I just saw, like, the silhouette of it in the back.

The streetlight only reaches so far.

But it was definitely physically there

because I could hear it jump the fence,

and you could hear that it d-- wasn't on all fours.

You could hear, definitely, it was just, uh, bipedal.

That freaked me out. I hurried up and closed the door, but--

'cause when I closed the door, it-- or opened the door,

it made-- we had these, like, blinds,

so it hit the door and it made a noise, and it--

when it, when it did that,

I could tell it looked towards me,

but it hurried up and turned around

and ran towards the river, which would be to the north.

And there's a irrigation ditch over there.

So it leaped over that irrigation ditch and ran back there.

And, of course, it's filled back there, so we couldn't track it

all, all the way through.

[eerie music]

There were some, uh, individuals

that were heading toward on N 36.

Now, like my son had mentioned earlier

that there's a NAPI, uh, about there,

it's called NAPI where they grow a lot of, uh--

it's an agricultural place where they grow

a lot of crops of hay and corn and stuff like that.

There's this little old lady.

Approaches and is asking people for a ride.

She just said, uh, she needed a ride up to NAPI,

which is the, uh, Navajo Agricultural area.

Well, some workers were heading to work

and they get to a crosswalk, a stop.

And just as he was getting ready to go across,

this huge-looking, like, dog, like a ghost figure over a huge dog,

it stood as high as the hood of the truck,

and it ran right in front of him.

Just took off, like, it was gone.

So there's several people that have seen something like that

up in that-- up, uh-- right-- be right up here on top of the hill here.

She had a lifted truck, and the dog was able to,

like, on all fours, not very far away from the truck,

probably just a few feet away from the truck, on all fours,

look, look at them almost in the eye.

[ominous music]

I did run across, um, a family contacting me.

What she described was a huge dog,

uh, very muscular, very tall.

She pa-- she said it stood probably about seven,

seven-and-a-half feet tall.

She had let her sheep out in the morning,

her and her daughter, about seven o'clock in the morning,

along with, um, goats and a ram.

And they had two sheep dogs.

Well, I believe it was on a Saturday morning.

So they'd take them down into the canyon,

and all of a sudden, about nine o'clock in the morning--

so the mom and the daughter just happened to look

at the front door. It was open.

And they noticed all the sheep was there back at the house.

They're like, "What? What, what--" you know, "what's going on?"

And they started counting.

That's when they noticed that they were missing

a ram and a sheep and one of their sheep dogs.

After they got them back into the corral,

the mom and the daughter,

they went back down into the canyon

and they started driving around to see if they could find them,

and they couldn't find them. But, well, when they got down and they drove,

I'm not sure how far down,

there's, uh, one area where it's flat.

When they got to that flat surface,

that's when they noticed the ram's head...

...was laying off to the side

along with the, the skin.

So whatever attacked the ram

took the ram's head, ripped...

...the ram's head along with the backbone,

threw it off to the side,

ripped the whole skin off, off of the ram,

it's off to the side. Now, those are laying there.

So, that spooked them. They're like--

they thought, "Well, maybe it was a pack of dogs."

They're like, "No, not this. This is something else."

They go ahead and grab the, uh, the skin and the head,

and, you know, take it back.

When they were sitting on their truck, they were, like,

facing, I would say, from north to south.

So they were talking

and the mom noticed...

...something move on that mound of dirt.

Bi-- it was a big mound of dirt.

And when it moved,

she said it stood up and it was tall.

And the color of it,

she said, "It's like a salt and pepper color,

silver and grayish color,

with some white and the mixture of it."

It stood up on its two legs

and it turned and it just, like, looked at them.

So they made, like, eye contact, and that really scared them out.

[eerie music]

It turned around, it walked.

As it turned, it looked at them.

She said it was very tall, very muscular in the chest.

Another one stands up beside it,

exact same color,

but a little bit smaller, a little bit shorter.

She said that it walked-- both of them walked

around the mound of that dirt and they were gone.

As soon as they saw that, they-- hill top--

you know, they just raced back home.

The ne-- but the next day,

they went back down to that area to go retrieve the,

the skin and the head.

Well, it was gone. And what they came back upon was the,

the skin of the, um, ram.

It looks like, um, this thing came back

and just ate the f-- what was left on that skin,

ate all of that, 'cause the wool,

it was scattered all over the place,

all over the ground.

That's when I went down there,

um, uh, myself and one of my teammates went down there

and we hiked down in this ravine there

in this wash.

And, uh, we couldn't, uh--

we never did find the dog.

They never found the dog, they never found the sheep,

they never found the rest of the body of the ram,

you know, any, uh, any of those three animals,

they didn't find anything.

Well, when we walked down into this wash,

-we finally came across the head... -[camera shutter clicks]

...with the backbone still attached.

-[camera shutter clicks] -Pieces of the bones,

the jawbone, that were down in that wash that we came across.

We did come across a, a print,

which looks like a, possibly a big canine print.

That's what we came across. Now, where these things were sitting on,

that mound, we walked around that,

um, mound there, and it was very sandy.

So when these things stepped,

um, it didn't leave a good impression.

So the-- what--

we came across what looked like the print-- footprint-like.

-[camera shutter clicks] -It looked huge, big.

In this wash, we did find a good print,

so we took pictures of that.

Uh, we did take pictures of the wool

-and, and the head. -[camera shutter clicks]

People in this area, in the area that we found these items,

uh, where this happened, is an area called,

uh, Chaco Wash.

And that is probably about...

...maybe eight, nine miles from here.

[eerie music]

[white noise]

[suspenseful music]

-[white noise] -My name is, uh, George Harvey.

I'm from here in Farmington, New Mexico.

[ominous music]

We've had, uh, like, dog-man encounters.

They've been happening all up and down on the reservation,

along the San Juan River.

Um, mainly on the, on the reservation side,

where most of the stuff happened.

There's, uh, an encounter my cousin had, uh,

not too long ago, last year.

Him and, um, my little nephew

were walking along this road.

They-- it was, it was in the nighttime,

just getting, just getting night.

They were looking up in the bushes.

They said it looked like a sheep at first.

And as they got closer, my, my cousin,

he said he noticed it started, like,

to stand, like, upright.

My nephew, he, like, got so scared, he froze.

And he couldn't walk or nothing. He was, like, frozen in place.

My cousin remembers...

...the chest and, um, the arms.

He said the arms were pretty long.

It had fingers, but it had claws on it.

It had like a, like a lion, it had like a mane,

he said that a grayish color--

how would, uh-- like a timber wolf almost,

like a dark grayish color.

It started running. It, it, it started, like,

getting toward the road, where they were at.

And my nephew, he was, like, still in shock,

and he-- they, they ran the other way,

down the-- back toward the-- where they were coming from.

And, um, they, they went

and jumped into the irrigation ditch to hide.

They heard that, uh, that thing start running on the road.

I guess it was looking for them.

And he can hear it running by, like--

and there's things that you hear, like... sniffing,

like trying to smell for them or something.

They said it ran by a couple of times, they can hear it.

A vehicle happened to come by, and, uh, whatever.

It, it ran away from the vehicle

'cause of the headlights.

After that vehicle passed,

my nephew and my cousin jumped out of the ditch road,

or jumped out of the irrigation ditch,

and they started running back towards his house.

[suspenseful music]

That evening,

my cousin said, uh, the dogs, all in that whole area,

in that neighborhood area,

they were, um, whining and whimpering most of the night.

He heard a scratching on his, uh, trailer below his window, like--

I guess, that followed them. I'm not sure.

But the-- it knew where he was at

and it knew exactly which room he was in

because there was scratches on the window.

There's, there's other encounters that happened on the reservation

with, uh, a lot of the other people, they--

most people don't come out and talk to-- talk about it.

It's, it's, uh, taboo.

Most people con-- uh, consider the dog-man

more like a-- how to say--

in our culture, the Navajo skinwalker.

That's, like, witchcraft. That's...

...that's, that's scary.

[chuckles] Running into those.

[ominous music]

My dad, being a medicine man, as I was growing up,

in my younger years,

they used to...

...come around his house at night.

In the summertime, it-- it'd be real hot.

So the top of the hogan, the-- where the stovepipe was,

we'd usually leave it open,

and there's a-- we'd put like a screen

and, uh, pull it down with bricks and stuff.

At night, sometimes I would, would spend the weekend with my dad,

and he lived real close to a, a bluff,

and his hogan is right below it.

You hear, um, bone whistles, like--

they, they'd use eel bones and whistle-- to make a whistle.

And you'd hear that at night coming from the bluffs.

That's when you'd know there was a...

...skinwalker who'd come down.

When they're around you, you get this, like, fear,

you can, like, sense it, it,

it does something to you. It paralyzes you.

[ominous music]

And so, when I was at my dad's house,

i-- as I was sitting there,

you'd hear those whistles at night,

and, uh, just that...

...sense of fear,

it'd come over us at night. And...

...my dad just be, "Oh, leave it alone. Just go to sleep.

They're, they're not gonna come inside the house." And--

Well, one night... [chuckles] they did come into the house.

I was, uh, I was sleeping on the floor

and I kept hearing the--

someone walking around outside his hogan.

It sounded like, um, like a dog trying to,

I guess, like, hop up on, on the window, look in the window.

And you hear scratching. All of a sudden, you heard--

I heard a, like, a thud on the roof

and you can actually hear someone walking...

[mimics footsteps]

...on top of the roof. And--

I was looking up at that-- the chimney hole.

I knew it was up there.

And sure enough, I looked up

and, uh, I saw a head peek, peek over,

and that had dog ears on it too.

And it, it, it, like, freaked me out.

And I-- I was trying to yell for my dad to wake up,

but I, I, I couldn't speak.

Like, my words would come out and be like a mumble.

I was trying to yell. I was laying there and...

...the only thing I could do was just close my eyes and...

...oh, like my hands started shaking, my body--

[clears throat] It dropped into the house

and was walking.

It was bipedal.

How, how I'd seen it was, uh--

what I'd seen, the dog ears and everything.

And when I looked at it, running out,

what I'd seen running out...

...it was a-- yeah, it was a guy, he was naked,

but he was painted.

And he had a...

...a coyote skin, like a hood.

It was tied off to his back.

My dad, he woke up then.

I just heard him cussing around and--

I heard a... [clears throat] I heard the door open up,

open up and closed.

And then that's when I could move.

And, uh...

...my dad was telling me...

...that, uh,

that he had kind of--

It was trying to do something to the family.

And, um...

...that's why it came inside the house. But...

...lu-- luckily I, I was awake,

and it-- and warned enough to...

...to kind of leave us alone.

My dad-- when my dad woke up,

it, it ran out. It just-- out.

He showed me--

he had-- uh, in his hand--

I guess when he was struggling with it,

he grabbed a piece of the hair, and--

he had long, long hair in his hand still.

He had to take it off and...

...he went and put it in the fire.

[clears throat] But when, when,

when Dad always talk about the skinwalkers and stuff,

it had a deep effect on people.

I, I know it's, you know,

it, it's scary. It,

it stays with you forever. [softly chuckles]

And, um,

just memories and stuff like that. Suddenly, you back--

you get-- like, the fear of it coming back sometimes.

[ominous music]

[distant echoing howling]

[suspenseful music]

It's, it's just a fear you know, you know.

It's like the boogeyman or, or something, you know.

I don't, I don't wanna see

the other side of... evil.

I don't know what that is out there.

I don't know if it was made from evil or not,

but usually somebody's dabbling somewhere they shouldn't.

I think they're more...

...leaning towards, like, paranormal, maybe witchcraftery.

Like-- that's my opinion on it.

I haven't really...

...gotten any enough, like,

hard evidence to back that up. It's just my opinion.

[music continues]

I think they're both, uh, I mean,

it's my personal opinion, is both, uh, paranormal and,

and flesh. A lot of people think it's, uh,

a spiritual thing.

If it's flesh and blood,

then we should be able to see it run off.

We could follow their tracks when they stop.

Did they disappear? Did they fly off?

Did they boil back there, back into the ground?

So that's why I say it-- I think it is both,

All this goes back to how I was taught

with our whole creation story.

It was brought to us by a, by a trickster, the coyote.

Hmm, he taught human people

how to use, uh, the animal skin and stuff,

to, to run fast. And...

...as we see it, it comes in different forms.

It'd be a werewolf or,

like-- it's somebody wearing a dog skin,

using that, that evil, evil black magic.

I, I wouldn't go outside at night very often

and didn't, like--

I met a man named J.C. Johnson and, like, he kind of gave me

more courage to go explore this stuff.

Like, you know, once you see something,

you're like, "I wanna--" like, it's like a--

like a wreck on the side of the road.

No matter how much you don't wanna look,

you're gonna want to look right at it.

So you go on venturing more and more and more.

I mean, it'll ta-- it'll take you...

...hours and miles and miles away

from where you normally live

just to get more information

or have a similar experience so you can know, "I'm not crazy."

Like, "This r-- is real."

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