Navajo Skin Walkers and Shape Shifters
By James Donahue
An article by Clyde Klukhohn involving Navajo witchcraft recently caught my attention. It brought to mind our personal experiences with the Navajo during the winter that we lived with the Begays.
Klukhohn notes that the Navajo who practice skin walking and shape shifting are practicing a form of black witchcraft that is unique to the Navajo, and have no resemblance to the “European variety” of black magic practiced among witches elsewhere. He writes that “there are no warning signs for the presence of a witch at work if they are in human form.” Such signs, he suggests, would include a blue flame or spoiled milk.
Klukhohn appears to be a bit unfamiliar with his subject. Elfrieda Begay and her mother were part of a coven of practicing black magicians on the Navajo reservation. We can say without reservation, the practitioner offers no outward signs until you either are the subject of the craft, or you are allowed to see.
After moving in with the Begays that winter, it did not take us long to learn that we were living with a witch. Elfrieda and her friends 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. Also we often found objects with painted images on them either hidden in our room or under the seat of our locked car. We quickly learned how to deal with the witchcraft, how to send the energy of hexes back to their origins, and how to live relatively comfortably in the midst of this coven. What was odd was that we never talked about these goings-on, and behaved as if nothing strange was occurring.
And yes, we even encountered a 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. Doris looked out of the kitchen window and announced that there was a wolf in the yard.
The oddity of this was, at the time, there were no known wolves in Arizona. While the government was attempting to plant the grey wolf in the forested areas in the southwest part of the state, they did not prowl the high desert where we were living.
Doris and I 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 there as well. The paw prints abruptly turned into human foot prints . . . small like the feet of a petite woman in flat shoes, like moccasins . . . before they disappeared at the wall of the hogan. It was clear that the wolf my wife had seen turned into a human after it 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.
Author Klukhohn wrote that the word for skin walker in Navajo is “yee nadlooshii,” which means walk/travel like an animal. Yet the name shape shifter signifies exactly what is accomplished. He wrote that the witch who performs this art is a “wer-animal” who owns an animal skin that is used to transform into this animal. Indeed, the vision my wife had was from a distance of several hundred feet, through a dirty kitchen window and in the midst of a sandstorm. She clearly identified the animal as a large dog, or wolf. From the paw prints I saw, it was a very large animal compared to the dogs in our yard, thus it was almost unnatural even for the size of a wolf.
Klukhohn observes that “any real animal can see through the skin walker’s disguise but even a human can recognize the unnatural creature. For some unexplainable reason even a well-seasoned skin walker cannot obtain the perfect animal gait or leave the proportionally correct sized animal tracks.”
My late wife and I are living testimony to the uncanny ability of the Navajo to accomplish this amazing feat. They did it right before our eyes. It was only one of many amazing wonders observed during that magical time we lived in Arizona.
By James Donahue
An article by Clyde Klukhohn involving Navajo witchcraft recently caught my attention. It brought to mind our personal experiences with the Navajo during the winter that we lived with the Begays.
Klukhohn notes that the Navajo who practice skin walking and shape shifting are practicing a form of black witchcraft that is unique to the Navajo, and have no resemblance to the “European variety” of black magic practiced among witches elsewhere. He writes that “there are no warning signs for the presence of a witch at work if they are in human form.” Such signs, he suggests, would include a blue flame or spoiled milk.
Klukhohn appears to be a bit unfamiliar with his subject. Elfrieda Begay and her mother were part of a coven of practicing black magicians on the Navajo reservation. We can say without reservation, the practitioner offers no outward signs until you either are the subject of the craft, or you are allowed to see.
After moving in with the Begays that winter, it did not take us long to learn that we were living with a witch. Elfrieda and her friends 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. Also we often found objects with painted images on them either hidden in our room or under the seat of our locked car. We quickly learned how to deal with the witchcraft, how to send the energy of hexes back to their origins, and how to live relatively comfortably in the midst of this coven. What was odd was that we never talked about these goings-on, and behaved as if nothing strange was occurring.
And yes, we even encountered a 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. Doris looked out of the kitchen window and announced that there was a wolf in the yard.
The oddity of this was, at the time, there were no known wolves in Arizona. While the government was attempting to plant the grey wolf in the forested areas in the southwest part of the state, they did not prowl the high desert where we were living.
Doris and I 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 there as well. The paw prints abruptly turned into human foot prints . . . small like the feet of a petite woman in flat shoes, like moccasins . . . before they disappeared at the wall of the hogan. It was clear that the wolf my wife had seen turned into a human after it 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.
Author Klukhohn wrote that the word for skin walker in Navajo is “yee nadlooshii,” which means walk/travel like an animal. Yet the name shape shifter signifies exactly what is accomplished. He wrote that the witch who performs this art is a “wer-animal” who owns an animal skin that is used to transform into this animal. Indeed, the vision my wife had was from a distance of several hundred feet, through a dirty kitchen window and in the midst of a sandstorm. She clearly identified the animal as a large dog, or wolf. From the paw prints I saw, it was a very large animal compared to the dogs in our yard, thus it was almost unnatural even for the size of a wolf.
Klukhohn observes that “any real animal can see through the skin walker’s disguise but even a human can recognize the unnatural creature. For some unexplainable reason even a well-seasoned skin walker cannot obtain the perfect animal gait or leave the proportionally correct sized animal tracks.”
My late wife and I are living testimony to the uncanny ability of the Navajo to accomplish this amazing feat. They did it right before our eyes. It was only one of many amazing wonders observed during that magical time we lived in Arizona.