It was October of 1992. My daughter and I attended a school meeting/class about Navajo language and culture. The question came up from some of the teachers about the Skinwalker scare that was being whispered about in the community and what should they do or say to help alleviate the fear that was spreading among the students. A Navajo Elder had agreed to speak with us about the Skinwalkers. She shared her own personal experience of when a Skinwalker had chased her and her family in her moving pick up truck from Gallup then had followed them home. She told us that there are Black Witches and Skinwalkers. Many times they are one in the same, sometimes a Skinwalker was referred to as being the most powerful of them all.
Everyone in Chinle had became frightened around this time. Skinwalkers were reported to have burned the Church in Nazalini to the ground and were on their way to Chinle. We had been warned that since our son was blonde and stood out from the crowd he could possibly become a target.
We attempted to live our lives in the same manner but the threat was always in everyone's minds. Chinle had suddenly become the target of a coven of Skinwalkers and even the air was filled with tension. After an incident involving our small son we were instructed to bring pieces of our clothing and give them to the Navajo Elder in order for her to give them to a medicine man. The medicine man, she said, was going to have a ceremony of protection for us, but I thought it was more for her.
We were from a small, mostly white community, in a tiny Southern Illinois town settled by the French hundreds of years ago. When my husband and I decided to move away in search of adventure, we had no idea what was in store for us. Our children were small, only seven and ten years old when we set out for the Navajo Indian Reservation in the heart of Indian county. My husband had accepted the position of Principal at the Chinle Primary School. I was not certain what I would be doing and our children were going to become the minority in a culture we knew little about.
Our minds and hearts were open and it turned out to be an extraordinary adventure. Our children grew up on the Reservation where we learned the culture, language and ways of these wonderful people. Life became very different, sometimes difficult, for all of us. It was a world apart from all that we knew, like a slice of the old west, with some things so foreign to us that we struggled just to understand.
We were there when the Hanta Virus struck and we watched helplessly as the world blamed the Navajo people for this disease and this beautiful rugged land that had become our home. We knew that was not true, but people frighten easily. We lived through an outbreak of Bubonic Plague, a rabies epidemic and a sand storm of epic proportions. All of these things made us tough and we grew to love the land even more.
I was no longer the woman I had been in Southern Illinois, I had changed, we all did. I began to help with animal rescue and teach classes in animal health and safety. As a result of this I became close with the Navajo children and was able to speak to their families and build lasting relationships. I had the freedom to speak openly with the people to the point of several Shima's ( Grandmother's) coming to Chinle to adopt some little Chihuahua puppies I had rescued.
During our time on the reservation, there were many mysterious unexplained events. I don't know, even to this day how can one explain hearing the sound of a flute floating up from an eight hundred foot deep canyon when no one is there? Or how do you explain hearing the moans in the wind of the people left to die on Starvation Rock a century ago? Or of having animals seek you out, because, as a medicine man told me, "my spirit became entangled with the animals and they can sense that you are a healer." How does a dog fall into a deep crevice, with no hope of getting out, but yet survives miraculously, even after everyone gave up on him, except for the old Navajo woman who chanted and sang for hours? Suddenly the dog pulled and squeezed his way up a perpendicular opening that defied all logic. Impossible you say? Well it happened.
Chinle is a Navajo word meaning wash, and it is the little settlement situated at the mouths of the two great canyons, Canyon de Chelly and Canyon del Muerto. On one particular day in the fall of 1991, my seven year old son, Jason, had come running into our apartment with Joey, his friend. Both boys ran straight for Jason's room and slid right underneath of his bed. I followed a bit puzzled and when I asked Jason what was wrong, he said in a shaky voice, "a Skinwalker is after us!"
It took a good while for me to calm the boys down. They had been visibly frightened, of that I was certain. We called the security guard for the school and after investigating and finding a naked man shaking a bunch of weeds at him, he too became frightened and left saying he could not help us. My husband had to come home from school and walked the boys through what they had seen. We could find no trace of the naked man, nothing was left except a pile of rocks where before there had been none. The event concern us for our son's safety.
After speaking with the police and interviewing others in our small community I ended up speaking with the same Navajo Elder who finally agreed to talk with me for two reasons. (1) because I asked, and since I was White and did not know she would tell me, (2) because my son had a personal experience and she was concerned for him and for my entire family.
The next week, a murder occurred in Chinle. The body of a teenage boy was found beneath the bridge on the way to the Canyons. He had been staked down, fingers, toes, and other body parts removed. The buzz word in the small Indian community was ritualistic, but no one spoke openly of it except for the Whites.
The following week another murder occurred, this time in Tsaile. An older Navajo man had been murdered. He was staked upright, appendages cut off and beheaded. His nephew told my husband he had been killed because he tried to get rid of the Skinwalkers.
I was terrified. Maybe it was the following week-members of the staff at the Primary school had an encounter with what they felt was a witch or Skinwalker. The Skinwalker targeted the family and seemingly without sickness or problems they began to die off one by one. My husband got involved and tried to get the police to investigate.
Three days later we were sitting in our apartment when a shadow crossed in front of our kitchen window. I thought that someone had come with some animals. No one was around and this was an area where you had to walk back to and could be seen by many different people. The shadow appeared for three nights, it had the look of a man but different, maybe bent, maybe large. An old medicine man worked at the Primary school and told us we must find out who was doing this and call out his name, then it would stop.
Your mind tends to play tricks on you when you are frightened. I know how we felt, I know what happened. Was it real? It certainly felt so. Finally things began to calm down a little. We went to Gallup one day. As we passed through Burntwater, an old man was standing alongside the roadway. He looked directly at us and mouthed something then shook a handful of what appeared to be dried grass at us. My instinct was to duck. He was very frightening. I did not understand any of this. I tried to put this out of my mind and threw myself into animal rescue. My husband and children also did their best to recover.
Everything went well until...About 1 year later when I was down for a weekend at my Phoenix home, I had a terrible dream. A face came forth suddenly in the night towards me, a horrible face, distorted and cruel and filled with intent. Then I heard a voice deep in my mind, it was more of a whisper and it said to me; "So, you think you know me?"
I woke in a cold sweat and have never been quite the same. What happened is true. How do I explain it-can't. I needed to do something so I got up out of bed that night and began to write, historical fiction set in another place and time, easier for me, the Novel SKINWALKER was born written in a five hour time frame. I did not publish it for many years, finally I copyrighted it in 2002 and published it, to be exact-6 years later. I had been too frightened, these things stuck with me, now I guess we will see....
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Tsaile
It happened on a Wednesday in the the fall of 1992. An after school program had been launched that offered martial arts training for the children. I walked my son over to the cafeteria after school to attend but found that the doors were locked. We waited but no one showed up. The next morning my husband found the teacher who was in a hurry and was packing his bags to leave. After prompting he finally told my husband what had happened.
His Uncle had property up in the mountains of Tsaile and the teacher had not heard from him for a few days. The last time he had spoken with his Uncle he knew that he had made a stand against the Skinwalkers (those who called themselves as such or referred to themselves as Black Witches). The Skinwalkers had come up onto his property. He told them to leave the mountains and the people of Chinle alone and go away. When his nephew drove up to the mountains on Thursday morning to check on his Uncle, what he found scared the hell out of him. His uncle had been murdered. His body was staked upright on a solid piece of wood, hands and feet bound. He had been beheaded. His head was stuck on a stake nearby, his heart buried in the sand. The fire still smoldered inside of the circle that had been drawn in the earth. Rattlesnakes had been hung in the nearby trees, the guardians of the underworld we had been told.
This REALLY happened. At this point I was ready to take my children and run for my life. But I did not. Each and every night I made sure the doors were tightly locked; made sure my animals were indoors; made certain all hair, fingernails, and clothing were indoors in safe places.
I knew that my Grandmother held fast to a deep religious faith, but yet she believed that there were things that went on that simply held, as she said "happened for no rhyme or reason."
I had heard of a Skinwalker from my Grandmother years earlier. She had related a tale to me from her mother, a French descendant of the voyageur who traveled up and down the Mississippi River trading pelts and supplies to the different settlements and Indian tribes . Of course, at that time I had no idea what a Skinwalker was. So, I jotted down the note with the other stories of witches, ghosts, and bewitching, she held so firm in her beliefs. I buried it in file drawer called "notes".
A Skinwalker is something all its own, something very evil and powerful. Scary really, especially when you have had your own experience...
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