 Every culture around the world has its own folklore. And within all these cultures around the world, with their specific folklore, comes the legend of shapeshifters. For example, a very common folklore that originated in Europe and then came to the Americas with the Europeans is the legend of the werewolf, a being a human that can shapeshift into a wolf under the full moon. But did you know that according to the Navajo culture, there is a folklore about shapeshifting that is so taboo that the Navajo people will not talk about it to outsiders. But before we go any further, you know what to do. Hit that subscribe button and give us a like. If you wanna help support the channel, there's a link to our Patreon page down below. Okay, let's get started. Welcome to Esoteric Atlanta. My name is Bryce, and today we're gonna be talking about the legend of the skinwalker. Taboo subject for the Navajo people. So all the information that I got on the skinwalkers came from outside sources. So with that being said, I do apologize if I get anything wrong. Now the Navajo people actually lived on the opposite side of the country. I live in the Southeast and the Navajo were from the Southwest. Now the Navajo is America's largest Native American tribe. And their tribe was located in present day North Eastern Arizona, Southeastern Utah, Northwestern New Mexico. This is a beautiful piece of land. It is beautiful deserts, breathtaking views. And the Navajo people, not unlike other Native American tribes, really tried to work in harmony with nature. So for the Navajo, the folklore or the legend of the skinwalker is the complete antithesis of what they actually stand for. Within the Navajo culture, certain men and women will learn how to become medicine people. They will learn how to work with the elements of nature in order to heal others. Now along their studies of learning this, they are also taught the dark side of magic, the dark side of working with these elements. The theory behind this is, from what I understand is that that every practitioner, as they hone in on their craft, they will be able to distinguish between good and bad. And as far as the Navajo culture is concerned, they only want to promote the good. All in all, in my opinion, the Navajo culture is one of total beauty. I actually think there's a lot that we can all learn from the Navajo community. So it is said that the skinwalkers are people that went down the path of the Madison man or Madison woman. And when they were taught that evil side of magic, they were corrupted by it. And instead of taking the path of righteousness, they decided to hang back with the path of evil. Now, from what I understand, shape shifting itself, according to the Navajo culture, isn't necessarily evil. In fact, before the white man came along, I read somewhere that the Navajos would teach their people how to shape shift in order to spy on other tribes. But then of course, as I said, there were a few, more than a few of these people that became completely corrupted by the evil. Now, it does take conscious choice to become a shape shifter from what I understand. There is actually a ceremony involved. Now, for the Navajo people, when they do wear animal skins, they typically wear them for ceremonies. And the animal skins that they wear are the sheep, animals that are not predatory animals. However, for the skinwalker, the skins that they wear are that of the coyote or a bear or a wolf, animals that find prey. You see, when one of these medicine men or women wanna become a skinwalker, the ceremony that they go through is quite intense. And it actually kind of reminds me of some of the legends we hear about the cabal. It is said that they have to find a loved one, preferably a sibling. They have to kill this person and then they have to eat them. It is also stated within the skinwalkers themselves, there is a leader, preferably an older man who has been a skinwalker for a very long time. Apparently all these skinwalkers still meet and hold ceremonies within the caves where they continue to participate in things like cannibalism and incest. They also are big into robbing graves. Now, the skinwalkers themselves, those that choose to become skinwalkers, it's not known by the people in the community that that's what they are. This ceremony and their identities are kept a secret from everybody else. But when the skinwalker does appear, they usually appear as a wolf or as a coyote. They say that these skinwalkers have red eyes when they are in the skins of these animals. But as humans, when they shift back, their eyes have an animalistic look to them. Now, the Navajo people do not want the skinwalkers around. The squid skinwalkers are completely evil beings. The skinwalkers can run extremely fast. They can jump off of clips and they can kill a person in a second. They only travel by night, a little bit like the werewolf. That's when their shifting takes place. Now, people in the Navajo culture say that they will beat on your car as you're driving by. They will run past you, terrifying the driver. And because the United States police department at this point has no jurisdiction on the reservations, the Navajo people living on the reservation do take matters into their own hands, sometimes, allegedly. There are stories that when they know that someone is a skinwalker, they will remove that person. Meaning, I have to say, if the person really is a skinwalker, I don't blame them. It seems that their nowadays is nothing positive left on the skinwalkers and they all have pretty much turned against their own people or rather, turned against humanity in general. It is said that usually a tribe today will know if there is a skinwalker present because their sheep will die. You see, according to Navajo, this sheep are so innocent and so good that the energy of a skinwalker in their midst is enough to make them perish on the spot. When a whole flock of sheep goes down, the tribe knows they have a problem on their hands. Now, in 1878, the Navajo community saw the biggest purge of skinwalkers. So what happened in 1878 with the Navajo community can very much be compared to what happened in Salem, Massachusetts for us people of European descent when we experienced our witch trials. By the mid-1800s, as the pioneers from the East Coast started to venture into the Western part of the United States, the Navajos, along with a lot of other native tribes, were all of a sudden challenged for their land. There were many battles between the Navajo and the pioneers and eventually, the Navajos unfortunately lost the battle. And so in 1864, the Navajo were moved by the United States government. This was called the Long Walk, very much similar to the Trail of Tears on the eastern side of the United States that had happened before. You see, of course, steering this Long Walk as the Navajo were being moved off their land, the conditions were horrible. At that point, so many of the Navajo apparently made the conscious choice to become a skin walker to escape their daily lives. However, by 1868, the United States government decided to give the Navajo their land back and they signed a treaty with them moving all the Navajo back to their native land. By 1878, 10 years later, the skin walker epidemic had gotten out of hand. And so the Navajo tribe had their own set of trials. Within these skin walker trials, 40 people were convicted of being skin walkers and murdered. This was the purge of the skin walker. But you see, it hasn't stopped skin walkers from existing. In June of 1987, the body of a Navajo woman named Sarah Saganitso was found in a rocky area behind where she worked. It appears that her left breast had been bitten off. She had stab wounds all over her body. And in typical skin walker fashion, a stick, a broken stick was placed across her neck. There were also piles of grass around the body and around her car in the parking lot that appeared to be from a graveyard. Now, a man named George Abney, who was a professor at the Northern Arizona University, was arrested and charged with her murder. From some accounts I read, apparently the bite marks to her breast matched his teeth. Apparently they found him because George had told some friends that he had had some crazy dreams about Sarah. Then the friends turned him in and he was arrested. Immediately, his defense attorney started to play on and use the legend of the skin walker to try to get this man off. They even tried to blame Sarah's own boyfriend, who was another Navajo man. However, he was about an hour outside of Flagstaff at a sweat lodge. Because the tails of the skin walker are so prevalent in the Flagstaff area, believe it or not, George was acquitted of all charges. It was firmly believed that Sarah was murdered by a skin walker. In fact, according to the accounts that I read, her own family believed that she had been murdered by a skin walker. And what does this mean? This means that someone in her family took her life as a part of the right of passage to become a skin walker. Now we can't talk about skin walkers without talking about one of the most famous skin walker areas in the nation. Of course, I'm talking about the skin walker ranch up in Northern Utah. But here's the thing. Where the skin walker ranch is located is not Navajo territory. So if the skin walker is a Navajo thing and where the skin walker ranch is located is not in Navajo territory, how did it come to be? You see where the skin walker ranch is located is actually Yut territory. And the Yut people have their own theories on why the skin walker ranch is what it is today, which is coming up next time on Esoteric Atlanta. All right guys, thank you so much for sitting through another story. Again, part two will be delivered shortly. Please let me know if you've had any experiences with skin walkers being from the Southeast. This is not something that I grew up with. This is not folklore that is from around this area. So I'd love to hear your stories if you have some stories to share. Again, thank you to Josh McKay for doing our music and Todd Roderick for being our editor and I will talk to you guys soon. Bye.