Something Fought My Grandparents’ Dogs At Night, And What We Saw In The Morning Terrified Us

So a bit of background info. My mother was raised on the Navajo reservation by her grandfather (a Navajo medicine man) and would always tell me stories about her childhood. However, most fascinating to me were her stories of skinwalkers, which she was always very hesitant to talk about — let alone write about. I had often thought about writing them out myself but I figured if I were going to share them then it had better be in her words. Finally after much convincing, she agreed to send me one of them through email.

image - Flickr / Khánh Hmoong
image – Flickr / Khánh Hmoong

Years ago, when I was about 12-years-old or so, I spent many winters with my grandparents. They had an amazing sheep camp in a canyon, where they set up had a tiny cabin, and let the sheep grazed protected from the cold winter elements. I grew up with stories of Skinwalkers and witchcraft all my life, but never really thought it was real. I viewed it as like a cartoon. They were still scary stories though. Living in the canyon for the winter was very isolated, but my grandparents were amazing and loving.

At night, every now and then, dogs would start barking. My grandpa would go outside to see if the animals were okay, otherwise it was so peaceful there in the canyon. One night, dogs started barking and would not stop. They were barking outside for 5 minutes at least, so grandpa went out with his huge flash light and tried to see what was going on.

He said he felt a creepy vibe and wasn’t comfortable being outside at that point, so we stayed sheltered in the Hogan (house). Dogs continued to bark, and the aggression in their tone was very apparent. They were obviously irate and upset. There was growling, and screeching — a very scary noise.

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This continued for at least an hour, and grandpa stated it could be a mountain lion or maybe some wild animal that came down from the mesas. It wasn’t until the morning that we went outside and found a wild scene.

When my grandparents set up camp in the canyon, their heat source was a wood stove, so they had a pile of firewood about 500 feet from the home. Next to the firewoods that morning, was a battle scene. There was traces of blood, there was fur scathing, scratch marks, etc. Our dogs looked worn out, and the littlest of our dog was huddled in on the side of the house.

The first thing my grandpa did was to check on the sheep. They were all fine and safe. Grandpa then started to investigate. There were drops of blood from the scene, along the road, and up into the mesa. We followed the tracking’s which at times seems like the footprints of a large cat, but then we notice it was odd. Now there was snow on the ground, so we can easily see the prints, and my grandpa kept saying these animal footprints don’t look right.

Sure enough as we trace the prints up the Mesa trail, we continue to see pools of blood, and at one point, whatever animal it was, had crawled up to a ledge that no dog or cat can reach if it were on four feet. It looked as it sat there, for there was an evidential print of a bloodied human hand, and also prints of the same cat print or animal print along with it. That was something we all could not explain. My uncle and my dad came and the men, continued to track where it led to, and we turned around and needed to get household chores done. When the men arrived back, my grandpa said it led several miles and disappeared. Skinwalkers are unexplainable. I did continue to have doubts, of course, but I saw with my own eyes that no animal could climb that steep a rock and sit there with bloodied hands — human, no less. In addition, all the weird fur by the wood pile was crazy to see too. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

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