Skinwalker Stories from Reddit

Story 21 : I think I met a skinwalker

Written by : u/Zchaupt

Year written : 2023

Growing up in Arizona, myths and legends are a part of life. Native traditions, mystic places, vortexes, ufo abductions, and dozens of other stories of the unknown that I always found fascinating. I grew up spending a lot of time wandering around the desert and the mountains, hunting, camping etc so I felt very at home in the wilderness.

One late spring day on one of my many hiking adventures, I wandered off trail and after several hours came upon a small group of old mud adobe houses. A few people heard me coming and came out of the houses to investigate, and after apparently making the collective decision that I was not a threat, one of the elders dressed in old style traditional native clothing and a headdress came over to greet me. The man spoke slowly and told me that I had wandered onto a Navajo reservation and asked me if I was lost, or if I needed help. When I told him no I was lost but intentionally, he chuckled and invited me in to eat with his family.

The next several hours were one of the great experiences of my life, the whole thing was like being thrown back in time. While we ate and talked, others from the surrounding houses began coming over to join us and I got the feeling they didn't get many outside visitors. We shared stories for hours about life, family, thier history in the area and time spent in the wild, and the longer we talked, the more they opened up and the more interesting the elders stories got. Throughout the time, there was one man who never spoke, he just sat out of the circle listening and watching me.

At one point, I told them I did what I called my walkabouts every year around September, where I would go out by myself into the wilderness for 2-4 weeks at a time, and this got the attention of the one silent old man. When I finished, he came over to the circle around the fire, sat directly on the ground in front of me and asked me to join him on the ground. He told me that years ago he used to do the same thing, and went on to tell me about the canyon he went to. He described it as a dangerous but magic place, and that I would see the world differently if I came back. If? Must be for dramatif effect.

When he finished, he invited me over to his home. The house was small, and through an open door in the back room, I could see it was filled with various animal pelts, coyotes and wolves mostly. He walked over and closed that door, then picked up and handed me an old map and some written directions that seemed like he had been holding on to them for a long time, and just walked away into that back room and closed the door behind him. It was late, and one of the families had invited me to stay the night, which I gladly did. The next morning as I prepared to leave, one of the old women came over to me with something in her hands, handed me a talisman and simply said "dip your bullets in the white ash at the hottest part of the fire." then just walked away.

September came, and as I packed for my walkabout, I saw the talisman in a drawer and something felt right about taking it with me. After a beautiful drive, I was very happy to find the forrest service road marked on the old map. The entrance to the area was remote and overgrown, and tough to get to even in my Jeep and took me much longer to get to than expected, so I decided to make camp and start the hike in the morning.

After a few hours on a trail that looked like it had been forgotton, I came to a stream, and the entrance to the secret valley. It was a narrow crack in the tall cliffs with about 4 feet of water running gently through, but too narrow for a kayak or canoe. I hoisted my gear over my head and began the wade sideways through the chest deep water. The crack in the cliffs seemed to go on forever, but after almost two hours I came to the place where it opened up into a small lake in an incredible valley surrounded by tall rock faces. This may have been the most remote place I have ever been, in the sense that there was no sign that people had ever been there. No trash, no bullet casings, not even the evidence of campfires.