Skinwalker Tales, an Index

Skinwalker Tales: Introduction, and the story of the newspaper delivery woman

Skinwalker Tales, Part 2: Anglo encounters with skinwalkers

Skinwalker Tales, Part 3: A shapeshifter dog, a dog snatched up by a skinwalker, and a shapeshifter in the bathtub

Skinwalker Tales, Part 4: The strange creature on the cliff

Skinwalker Tales, Part 5: Living with a Navajo witch

Skinwalker Tales, Part 6: Chased by a skinwalker on the way home from a party (ever notice how many skinwalker sightings happen on the way home from a party?)

Skinwalker Tales, Part 7: Tales from the City-Data New Mexico Forum

Skinwalker Tales, Part 7

I asked the members of the New Mexico City-Data Forum what they knew of stories and beliefs surrounding Skinwalkers. Here are some of their responses, minimally edited for clarity:

1. I've heard a few stories that involve skinwalkers between Gallup and Shiprock; it is scary driving through the rez [reservation] at night knowing what goes on.

I used to live in Farmington and worked with a lot of Navajo women, they tried to teach me a lot about their culture and many of them have known someone that has encountered a skinwalker or died from one.I was told that they take the skin of an animal and wear it and they are basically witches, they kill you by making you sick or by another animal or snake bite. They can appear out of nowhere and run at fast speeds like an animal.

2. My uncle works with a Navajo man who encountered a skinwalker. The guy said he was coming from Gallup late at night. And he was about to fall asleep at the wheel, when he stopped on the side of the road to try and wake himself up. Right when he stepped out of the car, he saw something gliding across the tree tops like in the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. He said he was scared stiff, then the skinwalker stopped and was just sitting atop the trees. He looked at the skinwalker and saw an old lady with a painted face. He said he doesn't know how he got home. Plus there are many stories of skinwalkers chasing cars. That's why I don't like driving from Gallup late at night.

3. The legends and stories I've heard growing up in NM, adds that it's dangerous/deadly to look a skinwalker in the eye. There are many stories of truck drivers trucking down the highway only to look out their side window and see a skinwalker racing along side them. I've also heard from a Navajo police officer that on two occasions he saw an animal/person and when he looked again it was a person/animal. One was in a rural area, but the other was right in the middle of Albuquerque.

Oh and also, the Northern NM Spanish (old land grant families), have similar beliefs in that one type of their witches (I believe there are 3 types, and this one is considered very evil and dangerous) have shape shifting abilities, mainly in the form of ravens and owls. There are particular roads and passes where one is more likely to run into one of these people/creatures late at night.

4. Skinwalkers are also talked about amongst the Ute Mountain Utes and Southern Utes. A couple of friends from the Southern Ute tribe and I talked about skinwalkers and they were telling me weird stories they have had driving on the rez. But they also told me, people outside of Native American descent have nothing to worry about, skinwalkers only mess with fellow Natives.

5. I've been in the Navajo Nation many times, day and night. Nothing untoward. A certain amount of luck, but I generally wasn't looking for anything like this. If Native Americans are more susceptible it is possibly because they have usually been raised to believe in such things as a matter of fact. If expecting something, sometimes you can find it. Something like opening a door; they can't necessarily pass through but if you do better be prepared for what is on the other side.

Anyone, of any persuasion, spending some time alone in the wilds of the rez, or at a place such as Hovenweep National Monument in the dark of night might be persuaded of any number of things.

6. I have one more story. This person went hunting for deer early in the morning, before the sky went blue. This guy was sitting next to a tree with his camouflage on. He had a high powered rifle with a scope. While he was looking for deer, he spotted something running his way. This guy said he was going to shoot it, but he didn't. He was scared and just sat there. This thing was coming closer to him and he noticed the thing was running on all four limbs. He decided to stay there and not run. This thing came running about 10 yards from him. He saw an old man covered with animal skin and painted face, running at least twenty miles an hour. He watched this skinwalker run through a 2 mile open field within under two minutes. He got scared and ran towards his truck. He said he never looked into his rearview.

7. IT IS SCARY!!! Ok, I have another story. This recently happened about two months ago. This family was coming from the casino late at night. They were somewhere near Pine Hill when two skinwalkers came out of nowhere. One skinwalker ran back into the forest and the other one started running by their side. They sped up and eventually outran the skinwalker. About a couple of weeks after the incident one of the persons died. It sounds exciting, but it's not. There are strange things that happen on the rez.

8. I'm the kind of person who doesn't have weird experiences with ghosts and the like, but one time when I was a teenager and boy scout we were staying at the Navajo boarding school in Fort Wingate (near Gallup). It was in December and sometime in the evening we looked out the windows in the wing of the building we were staying at and saw that it was snowing. Throughout the rest of the evening we would look out the window to see if it was still snowing while we played. One of these times I looked out and saw a person walking out in the snow. I told my friends and we all quickly got flashlights and shined at the person. From what I could see, it looked like a older Navajo man very well bundled up and walking along the side of our building. As he got close to our window, we all turned our flashlights off and hid so he wouldn't see us. When we looked out the window (assuming he would have passed by then) there was nobody outside. We then ran outside and saw footprints in the snow that suddenly stopped. I've never been able to come up with any explanation other than he just disappeared.I don't doubt the existence of a lot of things that are reported to happen on the rez and I love hearing skinwalker stories. Keep them coming.

9. I am not really familiar with this legend as I'm not Navajo, but strangely enough a lot of the things that I read from that article basically made a light bulb go off in my head... And to those of you who are going out hunting for ghosts and such on reservations.....don't mess with what you don't know, sure you may not believe in some of the stories it doesn't mean there aren't things out there that you don't understand. For example, the San Jacinto Mountains where my tribe is located in Southern California, has plenty of stories of hikers that climbed Tahquitz Mountain and never returned and their bodies are found in strange positions (such as just sitting on a rock, dead). Anyone from my tribe knows not to go up those mountains since an evil Shaman named Tahquitz lives there and is known to eat souls of tribal members (and maybe a hiker or two). I know some of you don't believe in this stuff (though of course it seems a lot of you are willing to as well) but too many stories have been told to me and too many things have happened to make me believe that things we don't really understand exist.

Skinwalker Tales, Part 6

From Skinwalker Stories (minimally edited for clarity):

My cousin and I were at a party. We decided it was late so we wanted to go home. We asked our friend if he could give us a ride, but he was too drunk to walk. So we started to walk down the street and had that funny feeling that something was watching us.

We thought it would be safe to walk through the wash. We were staying at my grandparent's house about five to ten miles away from the party in the middle of nowhere. We knew the wash like we knew the back of our hand, but it was pitch black outside. We didn't care. So we kept on walking. After 30 min. of walking we had that funny feeling again. We turned around and seen a dark figure walking. It was about 100 feet behind us our so. The we heard it laughing. By that time we were already scared and didn't know what to do. So we started to walk faster and faster. Yet it was like we could hear it breathing right beside us. Then we took off into a sprint, trying to get away from the creature but it didn't work.

It caught up to us. At that point it was running with us just laughing. Then it stopped and we got a good lead on it. It would pop up in front of us laughing. It was to dark to make out the facial features but it hade long pointed ears with a pointed noise, its eyes were the same color as a dogs. Me and my cousin were praying as hard as we could, praying in the name of Jesus for the beast to leave. Yet every time we would start to pray it would just laugh and laugh as if we were fools. Then we stopped to catch our breath it was gone. We dropped to our knees crying and trying to remember some verses in the bible our grandfather had thought us as we were growing up.

It came back. Walked around us in the shadows. Leaving and then coming back. I don't remember what we yelled out but it had left for the time being. We reach our grandparents house. They have no electricity and running water. The ordinary Navajo house. We got inside crying like no other. our grandparents asked us what happened, and we told them of what had happened. They looked at us as if they seen it before, and they described it to us.

Later that night it had came back to us as we were sleeping. My cousin was the first to find out that it was running around outside. He woke me up and was whispering in my ear "He's Back" so this time I was so scared that I grabbed my 12 guage shotgun. We prayed over the house and for our protection and we opened the door and it was gone. We never seen it again.

Skinwalker Tales, Part 5

From The Mind of James Donohue:

This writer lived with a practicing black magickian on the Navajo reservation, and lives with a practicing black magickian today, and can tell you without reservation, the practitioner offers no outward signs until you either are the subject of the craft, or you are allowed to see.

In the case of the Navajo man and woman who took us in, it did not take us long to learn that we were living with a witch. This woman belonged to a coven of practicing witches that could not resist playing games with us. Our poor dog, an innocent little creature nearing the end of his days, became the subject of numerous attacks, and we often found objects with painted images on them either hidden in our room or under the seat of our locked car.

Then there was the appearance of the shape shifter. One windy afternoon, as the sands of the high desert were turning the sky yellow and partly obscuring the sunlight, we were at the house alone. The dogs in the yard began barking and carrying on. My wife looked out and announced that there was a wolf in the yard.

We both ran outside to look at the creature, only to find that it and the dogs had disappeared behind an old Hogan that was once used as the family home before the government built the conventional house we occupied. When we looked, we saw the large paw prints of the wolf, but there was something strange as well. The paw prints turned into human foot prints . . . small like the feet of a petite woman . . . before they disappeared at the wall of the Hogan.

It was clear that the wolf my wife had seen turned into a human after she was out of our sight. Then, miraculously, this person walked through a wall of a locked building. Since we did not have a key, there was no way to enter the old Hogan to expose her in her hiding place.

We believe we were visited by one of the witches in the coven that day.

As we stood there, finding it hard to believe what we were looking at, my wife suddenly came to her senses. “Quick,” she said, “run into the house and get the camera. Nobody will ever believe this if we don’t get a picture.”

I returned to the house and had to search for a while to find our camera and make sure it had film. By the time I returned to the site, the blowing sand had covered the track. There was nothing left to photograph.

Skinwalker Tales, Part 4

Quoted from Jim Conrad’s Spring Comes to the Desert Southwest:

The dogs are barking in the darkness outside.

"Probably it's just an animal passing by," suggests Diane Harris as the three of us sit talking after supper. "Recently I've seen Kit Fox tracks, and we've had Badgers just below us. But, you know, for a long time something very strange has been going on here. It began thirteen or fourteen years ago. We heard a sound, a loud, shrill sound, moving along the cliff behind us, but it was so dark we couldn't see anything. It was a little like the call of a Red-tailed Hawk, but much too loud, and not really the same. It moved too fast across the cliff to be any animal with legs, yet it was too slow to be a flying bird. If it'd been an animal with legs, especially moving at that speed, it'd have knocked rocks loose and we'd have heard them. But not a single dislodged rock was heard."

"Over the years we've experienced this sound on several occasions. Each time the sound is a little different from other times, and always it moves much too fast and calls too loudly to be an animal. Time-before-last, I made a special effort to fix the sound's point of origin, and visualize the route along the cliff it took. Next morning, I went out and systematically covered all of the sandy area around us over which the sound-maker would have had to pass, but there wasn't a single footprint, neither in the sand or on the cliff... "

"Last time it happened, we had sense enough to go get the tape recorder as soon as it began. But we had to go down to the hogan to get it, and exactly when we turned the recorder on, the sound ended. As we were walking back to the house we stumbled over Jason. Well, finally it occurred to us that, since Jason was a very good watchdog and always barked hysterically at the least hint of anything out of the ordinary, he should have been barking his head off. But he just sat there wagging his tail and looking at us in a smiling way, as if nothing had happened."

"Two or three days later, a couple of our young Navajo friends came over for a visit and we told them, laughingly, about this mysterious sound. The man said, 'On the night you heard this sound, that's the night when Hite Chee came back to his hogan and found that somebody had witched him. Somebody had taken a hatchet or knife and gone around and chopped notches on each of the big logs coming out of the ground, holding up his hogan's walls. And there were hoofprints outside, where somebody had ridden a horse around and around.' This couple suggested rather matter-of-factly that we'd been hearing a skin walker. The woman told us that skin walkers can tell dogs to be quiet."

"Well, skin walkers are evil spirits. They're people who have killed a relative, and when they're around regular people they bring very bad luck. If you have an enemy, you can hire a witch who will send a skin walker against your enemy. You've noticed that the hogans have an open hole in their roofs. The Navajos believe that skin walkers climb up the outside walls of their hogans and watch them through those holes. We've noticed that when the sun goes down the older Navajos are inside their hogans or houses and that's where they stay until the sun rises."

By the time the skin walker story is over the dogs have stopped barking. After exchanging a few more stories I go outside and lie in Henry [his camper]. Before going to sleep I tune the radio to station KOA in Denver. The Stock Market is up a little today.

Skinwalker Tales, Part 3

More tales, quoted from Ghost Studies.com:

Another time a person was working at another convenience store down the road and had just finished cleaning the parking lot when he noticed a huge dog walking by the pumps. Not thinking anything about it he ran over to the dog to chase it away from the trash cans. That's when he noticed it had no tail and it's eyes were glowing red. He ran back into the store and locked the doors. He saw the dog run behind the main trash bin and talked himself into going back out and downplaying it as imagination. He didn't want the "dog" to spread trash all over the place after all the work he had done. Behind the large trash bin is a sandy area with no bushes or trees, just sand. When he followed the tracks around the back of the bin he saw that the tracks just ended. He became extremely frightened and ran back inside. By that time he was pretty much convinced of what he saw. He kept the doors locked the rest of the night and only opened them to let customers in. When his shift was over he returned to his car and started to open it when he noticed huge paw prints all over the top of the vehicle....it was in plain sight. He never saw anything out of the ordinary that would account for the tracks. He had the night off the next night and was spending time with his young nephews outside looking at the stars. One nephew was old enough to walk while the other needed to be held. As they were looking at the stars all the night sounds stopped. No crickets, nothing. The older nephew grabbed him by the leg while the younger one wrapped his arms around my friends neck and started to cry. My friend took his nephews back to the house and as he sat him down on the floor he happened to look back and saw something huge sitting on the roof of his car. he turned to his brother in law and asked him to a look at what he was seeing. When he turned back to located it again, it was gone. Later on that night he was lying in bed with his window open trying to sleep. He had to window open to allow a breeze in. As the curtains were blowing back and forth he kept seeing something through the breaks in the curtains. That when he realized it was a face looking down at him with glowing red eyes. It stayed for about 3 minutes and then was gone. About 2 am the family was awakened by the sound of running feet across the roof of the house. They ran outside with guns but could never see what was causing the noise. Finally they called a relative who was a Singer to deal with the problem and the situation finally ended. He was told later by the Singer that he had somehow offended the skinwalker.


Another Friend who was half Zuni and half Navajo used to visit her relatives in Crystal New Mexico and she resided in Window Rock at the time. During one of her visits to her relatives she went to a get together and didn't have a ride back and decided to walk back to her relatives home. As she was walking she got the feeling someone or thing was following her. She turned to look and saw and immense shadow following behind her. It flowed across the ground a fleeing shadow. she started to pick up her pace but it kept up with her. Finally when she felt she could not go any further. Headlights appeared down the road ahead of it was her relatives coming to find her. They noticed something dark and huge racing into the trees when they drove up. Later that month she was home in Window Rock when she heard her dog tied a chain in the back yard whining and crying. As she looked outside she saw a huge creature reach over the fence and grab the dog chains and all and run off with it. She never saw it again. She moved soon after that.

A cousin of mine was at a 49'er [a party with pow wow drummers] one night when he decided to walk home. As he passed an old home he heard something inside crying and mewling. Thinking someone was hurt he went inside not realizing it was a death hogan. When he came into the room where he heard the noise he saw one of the most horrifying sights he'd ever seen....in the bathtub was a creature in the process of changing...it was hairy from the waist down and seemed like it was melting...he saw the creature change from a human shape to an creature to this day he refuses to describe. Later on his home was constantly plagued by visitations from these creatures trying to get to him but luckily he had the place blessed earlier. There were times he would see dark silhouettes standing outside his window with glowing red eyes. They couldn't get in but the fear radiating from them weakened him so much he had to crawl out his room to get away...he wasn't able to walk. I saw him days later hiding out in a hotel room shaking like an old man. My brother had to perform a ceremony to help him overcome the fear and illness caused by the Naagloshi. These are just a few of he stories that I know of and I will share the rest later when it's daylight...night is coming and I don't want to continue this until daylight comes again tomorrow.

Skinwalker Tales, Part 2

Here are some more tales, quoted from the Daily Grail.

Although skinwalkers are generally believed to prey only on Native Americans, there are recent reports from Anglos claiming they had encountered skinwalkers while driving on or near tribal lands. One New Mexico Highway Patrol officer told us that while patrolling a stretch of highway south of Gallup, New Mexico, he had had two separate encounters with a ghastly creature that seemingly attached itself to the door of his vehicle. During the first encounter, the veteran law enforcement officer said the unearthly being appeared to be wearing a ghostly mask as it kept pace with his patrol car. To his horror, he realized that the ghoulish specter wasn't attached to his door after all. Instead, he said, it was running alongside his vehicle as he cruised down the highway at a high rate of speed.

The officer said he had a nearly identical experience in the same area a few days later. He was shaken to his core by these encounters, but didn't realize that he would soon get some confirmation that what he had seen was real. While having coffee with a fellow highway patrolman not long after the second incident, the cop cautiously described his twin experiences. To his amazement, the second officer admitted having his own encounter with a white-masked ghoul, a being that appeared out of nowhere and then somehow kept pace with his cruiser as he sped across the desert. The first officer told us that he still patrols the same stretch of highway and that he is petrified every time he enters the area.

*****

One Caucasian family still speaks in hushed tones about its encounter with a skinwalker, even though it happened in 1983. While driving at night along Route 163 through the massive Navajo Reservation, the four members of the family felt that someone was following them. As their truck slowed down to round a sharp bend, the atmosphere changed, and time itself seemed to slow down. Then something leaped out of a roadside ditch at the vehicle.

"It was black and hairy and was eye level with the cab," one of the witnesses recalled. "Whatever this thing was, it wore a man's clothes. It had on a white and blue checked shirt and long pants. Its arms were raised over its head, almost touching the top of the cab. It looked like a hairy man or a hairy animal in man's clothing, but it didn't look like an ape or anything like that. Its eyes were yellow and its mouth was open."

The father described as a fearless man who had served two tours in Vietnam, turned completely white, the blood drained from his face. The hair on his neck and arms stood straight up, like a cat under duress, and noticeable goose bumps erupted from his skin. Although time seemed frozen during this bizarre interlude, the truck continued on its way, and the family was soon miles down the highway.

A few days later, at their home in Flagstaff, the family awoke to the sounds of loud drumming. As they peered out their windows, they saw the dark forms of three "men" outside their fence. The shadowy beings tried to climb the fence to enter the yard but seemed inexplicably unable to cross onto the property. Frustrated by their failed entry, the men began to chant in the darkness as the terrified family huddled inside the house.

The story leaves several questions unanswered. If the beings were skinwalkers, and if skinwalkers can assume animal form or even fly, it isn't clear why they couldn't scale a fence. It is also not known whether the family called the police about the attempted intrusion by strangers.

The daughter, Frances, says she contacted a friend, a Navajo woman who is knowledgeable about witchcraft. The woman visited the home, inspected the grounds, and offered her opinion that the intruders had been skinwalkers who were drawn by the family's "power" and that they had intended to take that power by whatever means necessary. She surmised that the intrusion failed because something was protecting the family, while admitting that it was all highly unusual since skinwalkers rarely bother non-Indians. The Navajo woman performed a blessing ceremony at the home. Whether the ceremony had any legitimacy or not, the family felt better for it and has had no similar experiences in the ensuing years.

Skinwalker Tales

According to Wikipedia, a Navajo skinwalker or skin-walker (yee naaldlooshii) is a witch; a shape-shifter who assumes the shape of an animal in order to travel.

Clyde Kluckhohn, in his classic 1944 work, Navaho Witchcraft (quoted in The Lore of New Mexico, edited by Marta Weigle and Peter White, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988), tells us: The principal reason that so little is known of Navaho witchcraft is the extreme reluctance of the Indians to discuss the matter. As one informant remarked, "People don't tell about these things; they keep them down here in the body." On the one hand, if other Navajos learn that a certain man or woman has discussed the subject, that person is by that very fact open to suspicion of knowing too much, i.e., of being a witch. On the other hand, if the informant relates anecdotes referring to the supposed witchcraft activities of others, he becomes liable to their hatred and revenge. In particular, if these persons "really are witches," and they learn that someone has gossiped about them, they are, it is believed, certain to witch the gossiper and get him out of the way. Over and above these two excellent reasons for caution and silence, there is the additional motive that most Navahos who are "good citizens" feel a genuine discomfort in talking about such topics which are defined for them by their culture as evil and ugly.

I suspect that this is why so many of the skinwalker tales available are rarely told in the first person; the story is one that happened to "a friend," or to "my uncle's hunting companion," or it comes from some other second or third hand account.

Please note: In collecting various skinwalker tales, I have used academic sources, accounts told to me or to a group I belong to, and a number of shakier sources--you know the kind, those wild and sensational websites that purport to have spiritual connections of one type or another. I will always let you know where I found each tale. Now, as I have said elsewhere on this blog, find your "suspension of disbelief" button, and make sure that it is in the "on" position.

The Tales

The following story can be found on many places around the Internet. It always reads the same, word for word, which would indicate that it is being cut and pasted from page to page without any credit being given to the original poster. I found it at Daily Grail:

One story told on the Navajo reservation in Arizona concerns a woman who delivered newspapers in the early morning hours. She claims that, during her rounds, she heard a scratching on the passenger door of her vehicle. Her baby was in the car seat next to her. The door flung open and she saw the horrifying form of a creature she described as half-man, half-beast, with glowing red eyes and a gnarly arm that was reaching for her child. She fought it off, managed to pull the door closed, then pounded the gas pedal and sped off. To her horror, she says, the creature ran along with the car and continued to try to open the door. It stayed with her until she screeched up to an all-night convenience store. She ran inside, screaming and hysterical, but when the store employee dashed outside, the being had vanished. Outsiders may view the story skeptically, and any number of alternative explanations might be suggested, but it is taken seriously on the Navajo reservation.

A slightly different version of this story, and the only one I found from this perspective, comes from Ghost Studies.com:

One night a friend was at a convenience store on the rez visiting with the clerk when a hysterical woman came in screaming about her baby. He didn't know what was going on so he ran outside to see if there was anything he could do. He ran to the passenger side and noticed huge scratches along the side of the car. As he inspected it he heard the cry of a child inside the car. He quickly opened the door and found a child hidden under a stack of newspapers. This was the delivery person for the local newspaper. She had been delivering the papers to area businesses when she heard scratching on the passenger door. Her baby was in a car seat next to her. The door flung open and the woman saw a horrifying sight. It was a creature that was half man and half beast with glowing red eyes reaching for her child. she fought it off and managed to get the door closed and sped up. The creature was running along side the car still trying to get in. Panicked the woman managed to get the child out of the car seat and place it on the floor hiding it under the papers and raced for the nearest open business or house. The creature slammed into the passenger door over and over again until she drove into the parking lot. She ran in screaming and hysterical. She quit delivering papers that night.

Skinwalkers in New Mexico

Funny thing about New Mexico--every once in a while, right in the middle of a normal conversation, someone will say something that makes you sit up and take notice; something that you might not hear in other parts of the country. You glance around at others who might have heard, wondering what their reaction will be and you make the discovery, once again, that this place must be enchanted because people say the most amazing things that are simply taken for granted. This happened to me once when, during a lunch time conversation in a teacher's room in a southern NM elementary school, someone asked about finding a curandera for his wife, who had been bewitched. No one, other than my own startled self, seemed to find this request unusual (see Las Cruces and the Suspension of Disbelief).

It just happened again to me a few days ago, this time during an online discussion about the pros and cons of a family moving from a crime-ridden city in Ohio to the small town of Thoreau, New Mexico. Right there, in the middle of chatting about weather, and shopping, and schools, someone threw out this piece of advice: "...you might encounter skinwalkers at night. I would go to either Gallup or Grants [instead]."

No one else seemed bothered or excited by this statement. I wrote privately to the person who had made it, who told me: Skinwalkers are Navajo witches. They dress themselves up in coyote skin and paint their faces. There is actually a documentary out there about skinwalkers, with actual skinwalkers narrating. There is also a video message going around of a skinwalker running in front of a car. It looks like a dog or coyote, then it runs to the side of the road and stands up. It's chilling! I don't know if that clip is on youtube, but I have heard that it is. I have that video on my phone. That video was taken outside of Gallup.

I was grateful to this person for explaining this much to me, as I hadn't been sure that people would be willing to talk about their skinwalker experiences. I decided to collect as many tales as I could. In the meantime, I have found that the discussion of the supernatural in traditional societies in the Southwest is becoming more mainstream. Here is a statement I found in a book called Witchcraft in the Southwest, by Marc Simmons (University of Nebraska Press, 1980):

Recently in his weekly newspaper column, Pulitzer Prize-winning Indian novelist N. Scott Momaday noted with candor that his own young daughters are inordinately fond of witch stories and that he himself has “a thing about witches.” Recalling personal experiences, he reflected that “there are witches at Jemez Pueblo, and when I lived there I knew of them, sure enough. One night I saw some curious lights away in the distance, small points of light moving erratically about at ground level, and I was told that they were “witch lights.” I thought: Nonsense, there are some boys running about with flashlights, that is all. And then one of the lights rose slowly and moved like a shooting star across the whole expanse of the sky. I shudder to think of it.”

Next: Some stories of encounters with skinwalkers.