All of her life, Frances T. has "seen things," heard things and
felt them. Born into a family of sensitives, this was rather
normal. "In my family, you were considered odd if you didn't
experience 'abnormal' things," Frances says. "We never talked much
about our experiences or our feelings about them. We just accepted
them as normal - which, in fact, to us they are."
But nothing could have prepared her family for what they
encountered on a dark, desolate road in Arizona 20 years ago. It's
a mysterious and traumatizing event that haunts them to this
day.
Frances's family had moved from Wyoming to Flagstaff, Arizona in
1978 shortly after her high school graduation. Sometime between
1982 and 1983, 20-year-old Frances, her father, mother and her
younger brother took a road trip back to Wyoming in the family
pickup truck. The trip was a vacation to visit with friends in and
around their old hometown. The only member of the family not
present was her older brother, who was in the Army and stationed at
Ft. Bragg, N.C.
The course along Route 163 took them through the Navajo Indian
Reservation and through the town of Kayenta, just south of the Utah
border and the magnificent Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park.
Anyone who has lived in Arizona for any length of time knows that
the Indian Reservation can be a beautiful if harsh place for
non-natives. "Many strange things happen out there," Frances says.
"Even my friend, a Navajo, warned us of traveling through the
reservation, especially at night."
Along with the warning, however, Frances's Native American friend
blessed the family, and they were on our way.
"We have company."
The trip to Wyoming was uneventful. But the trip back to Arizona
along the same route more than justified the warning from Frances's
friend. "It still gives me goose bumps," she says. "To this day, I
have major anxiety attacks when I have to travel through the north
country at night. I avoid it at all costs."
It was a warm summer night, about 10:00 p.m., when the family's
pickup was heading south on 163, about 20 to 30 miles from the town
of Kayenta. It was a moonless night on this lonely stretch of road
- so pitch black that they could only see just a few feet beyond
the headlights. So dark that closing their eyes actually brought
relief from the fathomless black.
They had been driving for hours with Frances's father at the wheel,
and the vehicle's passengers had long ago settled into quiet.
Frances and her father sandwiched her mother in the truck's cab,
while her brother enjoyed the night air in the back of the pickup.
Suddenly, Frances's father broke the silence. "We have company," he
said.
Frances and her mother turned around and looked out the back slider
window. Sure enough, a pair of headlights appeared over the crest
of a hill, then disappeared as the car went down, then reappeared.
Frances commented to her father that it was nice to have company on
this stretch of road. If something went wrong, neither vehicle and
its passengers would be alone.
Thunder began to rumble from the vast, clouded sky. The parents
decided that their son should come into the cab before he got
soaking wet from any rain that might fall. Frances opened the
slider window and her little brother crawled in, squeezing between
her and her mother. Frances turned to close the window and again
noticed the headlights from the following car. "They're still
behind us," her father said. "They must be going to either
Flagstaff or Phoenix. We'll probably meet them in Kayenta when we
stop to fuel up."
Frances watched as the car's headlights crested another hill and
began its descent until it disappeared. She watched for them to
reappear... and watched. They didn't reappear. She told her father
that the car should have crested the other hill again, but hadn't.
Maybe they slowed down, he suggested, or pulled over. That was
possible, but it just didn't make sense to Frances. "Why in the
hell would a driver slow down or, worse yet, stop at the bottom of
a hill in the middle of night, with nothing around for miles and
miles?" Frances asked her father. "You'd think they'd want to keep
sight of the car in front of them in case anything happened!"
People do weird stuff when they are driving, her father replied. So
Frances kept watching, turning around every few minutes to check
for those headlights, but they never did reappear. When she turned
to look one last time, she noticed that the pickup was slowing
down. Turning back to look out the windshield, she saw that they
were rounding a sharp bend in the road, and her father had slowed
the truck to about 55 mph. And from that moment, time itself seemed
to slow down for Frances. The atmosphere changed somehow, taking on
an otherworldly quality.
Frances turned her head to look out the passenger window, when her
mother screamed and her father cried out, "Jesus Christ! What the
hell is that!?"
Frances didn't know what was happening, but one hand instinctively
reached over and held down the button for the door lock, and the
other tightly grabbed the the door handle. She braced her back
against her small brother and held firmly onto the door, still not
knowing quite why.
Her brother was now yelling, "What is it? What is it?" Her father
immediately flipped on the interior cab light, and Frances could
see that he was petrified. "I have never, ever seen my father that
scared in my whole life," Frances says. "Not when he came home from
his tours in Vietnam, not when he came home from 'special
assignments,' not even when someone tried to firebomb our
house."
Frances's father was as white as a ghost. She could see the hair on
the back of his neck standing straight out, like a cat's, and so
was the hair on his arms. She could even see the goose bumps on his
skin. Panic was filling the small cab. Frances's mother was so
frightened that she began shouting in her native Japanese in a
high, squeaky voice as she frantically wrung her hands. The little
boy just kept saying, "Oh my God!" Skinwalker Legend
Is the Navajo Skinwalker the same as the white man's werewolf? Yes,
if the Navajo witch wears the skin of a wolf. But the Navajo
witches can mimic any animal they choose, not just the wolf. They
can be a cat, a coyote, a dog, a bear, whatever the Navajo witch
wants to be. The Navajo witches pick their skins for the type of
job they plan to do. The coyote skin is for high speed, accurate
sense of smell, and the acute agility. The bear skin is for brute
strength, however the bear is not as fast as the coyote. Along with
their new abilities, the Navajo Skinwalkers still retain their full
mental capacities. If the Navajo witch is a fairly or highly
intelligent person, when he or she changes into a Skinwalker they
carry that intelligence with them and you have a very dangerous
opponent. Unlike the wolf man, the Skinwalker will use their whole
bag of tricks - mind control, disease, and immobilization
powder.
- from Navajo Skinwalkers
