“The Real Truth Behind Navajo Skinwalkers”

Tags: episode // cryptids // published
Related:

Zack’s Script: (January 2026) B&B: Skinwalker

• Add link to Zack’s Google Doc script (above)
• After episode airs, move any unused stories to story vault // Episode Themes & Story Ideas

Skinwalker Research & Story Compilation Doc

Terms to Search For…

Also known as…

• Not deer
• Flesh pedestrian
• Deer Woman
• Huay Chivo
• Madam Koi Koi
• Nagual
• Odiyan clan
• Warlock
• Werewolf

Looked like…

• Humanoid
• Silhouette
• Man
• Mistook
• Tall
• Skinny
• Freaky

Moved like…

• Movement(s)
• Distress
• Position
• Smile
• Staring
• Hunched
• All fours

Sounded like…

• Voice
• Howl
• Help
• Feminine
• A laugh or a cry

Color Coding Key

Skinwalker Research:

r/mythology Reddit thread:

🔗 Comment from mythological_donut on this r/mythology Reddit thread:

“Not much is known about the Yee naaldlooshii as that information isn't meant for people who aren't Navajo. The Navajo people don't like to discuss the Yee naaldlooshii and so lore or details about them are not usually shared.

There are many other shape-shifting witches/shamans across other cultures that you can look into. From Mesoamerica, there's the Chīchtli, a witch or sorcerer that shapeshifts into an owl and the Nahualli. Further South are legends of the Kalku. In African lore, there's the Bouda, they can be shamans/healers, blacksmiths, woodcutters, etc., who transform into hyenas. Balinese lore has the Leak or Leyak, if your looking for specific names some Leak stories have witches with names. Here's a response I gave before about Leak's, it has some names.”

🔗Comment from hbsc on this r/mythology Reddit thread:

“Ok so basically alot of the native tribes believe some form of witchcraft/magic, this includes most of the southwest tribes like cherokee/zuni/pueblos and ofc Navajos(aka skinwalkers).

Skinwalkers are specific to navajo in that they are their own type of witch who are mostly known turn to dogs/four legged creatures but can sometimes be birds. There’s another tribe who you should read into with witches that are solely known as “raven mockers” which you might’ve guessed prefer to use birds as their animal of choice. id say magical shapeshifters can be similar animals no matter the area since dogs are common animals for shapeshifters even in other cultures outside of navajos

🔗if you havent already read this anthropologist journal on skinwalkers“ ← Academic source, free to access as long as you use a free Archive account to “borrow” the book

The compiled skinwalker stories I found for January 2026 episode!

Story #1

Paranormal experiences or two former Mormon missionaries...

Story #1 Body

Story #1 - part one // OP’s personal story as a missionary

I am an ex-Mormon. I served a "mission" for the Church, meaning door-to-door salesman. Our product: Mormonism. I went to San Jose and San Francisco, California. Early 1980s. This is when Apple was just getting "big". Many thousands were moving into San Jose area. Housing shortage. Mormon missionaries live in "companionships". We must always be with our missionary companion, except in the bathroom. Anyway, we lost our apartment, and the only place they could find for us was a small room (size of a walk-in closet) in the home of a very fat "CRAZY" Mormon woman, who rented out her rooms. We were NOT supposed to live with a woman, in the same domicile, but, we had no other place to go. Anyway, the first night sleeping there, a voice came out of the closet (cliche' I know, but that's what happened) and called my first name, TWICE. I never told the woman my first name. We went by "Elder" even though we were young men. Anyway, second or third night, I hear my name being whispered again, from the closet. I think my missionary companion is playing a joke on me, but I can hear him singing in the shower, down the hall. He was Italian, and loved to sing in the shower. I could hear him. WHO was calling my name? I get up and look in the closet, nobody there. The next morning I wake up with three DEEP scratches across my loins and lower stomach. Three very close. Like very deep tatoos. Burned like HELL...but did NOT bleed. Either a cat or a rat could do that. No human could. The deep scratches were like deep cuts, too close together for human fingernails. More like a rat or a cat. Later that day, I ask the crazy fat lady "Do you have any cats?" I didn't tell her that I'd been scratched. She said, "No, but you KNOW this house is HAUNTED YOU KNOW?" I did not tell her about the voice. My companion came into the kitchen, and she told him "You know this house is haunted?" so my companion "blessed" the house. Luckily, our "Mission Office" found us a new place to live, in a few days. I was very happy to be out of there. Yes....as God is my Witness, this really happened, exactly as I just wrote it to you.

Story #1 - part two // OP shares another missionary’s story as it was written on another Reddit thread (r/Paranormal)

The following story is NOT from me. I apologize for the foul language. The person who wrote it claims to be a former Mormon missionary. I can tell, yes, he was. However, he uses very foul language. Again, I apologize. I do not know if he story is true or not. However, I DO KNOW that paranormal incidents are, for some reason, much more common on Indian reservations than outside of them. Don't know why that is. Just seems to be. So, read his story. I cannot tell you if it is true or not. But, it is interesting. I did not write it. I'm just sharing it. In Mormonism, American Indians are considered the descendants of ancient Jews in America, and thus a "Chosen People", so Mormons try to convert Indians to the Mormon Church. Not much success, but there are many hundreds of white Mormon missionaries on Indian Reservations around the country at any given time.

All Mormon missionaries are in "companionships" of two. Four to eight "companionships" are supervised by "District Leaders" who are also missionaries (aged 18 to 25ish). The District Leaders are supervised by "Zone Leaders" who are supervised by "Assistants to the President" who are supervised by "Mission Presidents" who are retired Mormon men. District Leaders often will come to a "missionary apartment" without calling ahead first, even late at night, to make sure the missionaries don't have girls over, aren't watching TV, listening to music, or are home with "lights out" when they should be.

The story below is NOT written by me. It was posted by somebody else on Paranormal some time ago. I found it interesting. The story was written by an ex-Missionary who served a mission to the Indian Reservations in Arizona. Again...I CANNOT say if this story is true or not, but I'm SURE that this guy was, at one time, a Mormon missionary. Again, I apologize for his language. Judge for yourself:

Lets jump ahead another week. I've been transferred to a new area, I covered part of the San Carlos Apache Reservation in Arizona. My companion and I were given a truck to use since we covered 5 or so small towns of <2000 each. We were driving back from Superior, Arizona around sunset because we had a rule that we wouldn't stay in that town past dark due to safety concerns. If anyone is familiar with the Superstition Highway and the turn off onto 177 this is the area that it happened around. My companion was the one driving, since he had been in the area for the past 5 months, he was telling me about the area and the little quirks of the towns.

Suddenly, this massive and mangy dog walks into the middle of the road and my companion immediately starts speeding up. I start yelling at him "what the fuck are you doing!? You're going to hit that dog" And he just tells me to shut the fuck up and to not look at the thing in the road. As we got closer, it started to look less like a dog and more like a person, but it just sat there in the middle of the road. The truck was going about 100mph at this point and as we passed it, i made eye contact with it and i swear to god it was smiling at me. Its face was all sorts of fucked up...like someone had found a dead dog on the road and was wearing its skin. I try to turn around and immediately get punched in the arm by my companion as he's screaming "I TOLD YOU NOT TO LOOK AT IT!" I try to get a look at it one last time and the thing takes off running into the desert on all fours...but there was something about the way that it walked...almost like it was injured but it took off at an ungodly speed and i lost sight of it as we rounded a corner.

It took me the whole night to convince my companion to tell me what the fuck all that was about. It wasn't until we hear a knock on the door, this was already 11pm at this point (we were supposed to be back at our apartment at 10 mind you) and my District Leaders voice coming from the other side. I start walking towards the door and my companion grabs me from behind, covers my mouth and tells me that if i open that door, we're both dead. After elbowing him in the gut to get him to get off me, he gets out the phone and calls our District leader (who was assigned to Globe and the other 2/3 of the Reservation.) He answers and my companion asks where he is. He responds with "dude, its 11pm i'm in bed. where else would i be?"

At this point i'm convinced they're both fucking with me and go to answer the door again since the knocking has continued and was annoying me. My companion starts crying and is begging my district leader to swear on his life that he's up in Globe and not outside our apartment. Our district leader broke one of the cardnal rules of cell phone use and sent us a picture of him and his companion in their Globe apartment with a time stamp, both missionaries had terrified looks on their faces and i had no idea why.

The knocking had stopped at this point and i decided to get some sleep. The next day, we had a District meeting and I made an off comment about how stupid it was for them to waste the two hour trip just to fuck with me since I was new. Everyone got really quiet and started arguing on whether or not they should tell me what had happened. My district leader finally broke down and told me what had happened. He started on about Native American tradition and a brief history of the Reservation, and that there is a legend among the Natives, of Skinwalkers. Someone that had gained the ability to turn into any animal by committing some heinious act, such as murder of a relative or something similar. edit Part 1: https://redd.it/4mmppt

Pic of where i lived: http://imgur.com/6u9QNyV Pic of me, day of event: http://imgur.com/TPEkqlO

Story #1 - Related Images

Comment on Jamshid_Rohani’s Reddit post (Source #1):

Story #1 - Source Information

Story #2

Paranormal encounter on the rez

Story #2 Body

Hey yall i need opinions and answers. so a couple days ago i was told a story about someone i know and we want to find out what it was.

It was the middle of the day and there were like 12 guys hanging out on 6 nations rez in ontario and they came across something wild. They took a walk in the woods and saw what looked like a camp out. at this point they had split into smaller groups and were surrounding this camp. they looked in the trees and say fish guts hanging, and i mean all of the parts you normally wouldn’t use.

So there kinda standing there thinking what is this crack head on cause hes balled up in the middle rocking back and forth and humming. one of them laughed and he automatically stopped. and i mean dead stopped, looked up, slowly looked to the other side (the one the kid that laughed wasn’t on) and then slowly turned his head to face him. then in a girl like voice he said “i see you” so the boys on that half book it back to their friends house.

the kids on the other half are kinda trapped. so they’re watching this guy not move a muscle and they start legit army crawling back till there not wedges anymore. So this guy turns to them and says again in the same voice “i can see you”

so the second half of them book it out of there he’s running after them. so they get to the edge of the forest where it turns into a field and keep running. the guy said when they looked back the guy was watching from the forest’s edge.

when the guys got inside they regrouped and were talking about it. when they mentioned the guy chasing them the first group said no he was chasing us and it sounded like he was right behind us. but the second group said no we watched him the whole time and he never moved till he saw us.

normally i’d think it’s a crack head but both groups herd running behind them, the guy stopped at the edge of the forest, and there wasn’t two crack heads at the camp. plus there stories of not leaving blinds open on the rez cause something will try to get you to come out of to let them in. ANDDDD the girlfriend of this guy said she fell asleep on call and heard three sets of knocking. she cut the third on off by waking the guy up telling him to stop it was annoying, but she woke him up and he was confused cause he didn’t hear knocking.

Anyways i hope someone knows what it is, we’re just curious and wanna know if we should be worried

Story #2 - Related Images

Story #2 - Source Information