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TO EXPLAIN TALES 20
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Skinwalkers
A couple days after my birthday in September, 2002, my friends and I went
camping to celebrate in Arizona. We lived in Utah, so it wasn't that far of a
drive to northern Arizona. We wanted to go to a camp site that my friend said
his brother had taken him to on a camping trip a couple years prior, and so we
set off to find it though he was a little hazy on how to get there. We searched
for it and asked around with the locals for a couple hours, but we were burning
precious daylight so in our search we decided to just get some fishing in, and
then when it was getting later we would find any old camping spot to crash at.
After a pretty uneventful couple of hours fishing, it got dark fast so we hopped
in my friends truck and headed into the hills of northern Arizona that were
riddled with camp grounds. In our search for a camp sight, we took a wrong turn
which lead us down a really desolate dirt road. With no lights in sight, and
just a sliver of a moon, it was extremely dark. After about 20 minutes on this
road, we were convinced that we needed to turn back. But just as we finished
deciding to turn back we saw someone in the distance.
"Hey, we could stop and ask him for directions," I said. But literally as
soon as the words left my lips, we all realized how strange it was this person
was standing on the side of the road way out here. As we passed the person, the
person's gaze kept on us and followed as we passed, and without any reason I got
spooked and the hair stood up on the back of my neck. The person was pretty
tall, and was wearing a brown jacket that had a collar that was pulled up over
his face, and that combined with his hat, the only thing we could see were his
eyes. But regardless of how strange that was, we decided that this was in fact
the wrong way, and so we flipped a U and headed back.
About fifteen minutes down the road, when we had almost forgotten about the
brown coat person, he appears in our headlights, this time on the other side of
the road and again, staring right at us. Now, we were only driving about 25 or
30 miles per hour, but still, there was no way that his person could have gotten
this far back up the road. We were all a little spooked after that.
When we finally found a campsite, we started to talk about the guy, and one
of my friends said that it could have been a Skinwalker. Having never heard
about these creatures, I was intrigued. I was surprised to hear that the person
that we saw was a cookie cutter example of what a Skinwalker looks like. We were
spooked enough that we decided to pack up and just head home at 2 in the
morning, hoping to make it home by about 7 or 8 in the morning. While we were
packing up, I was just chatting with one of my friends. My other two friends had
gone to go to the bathroom some ways off, and while I was rolling at tent, I was
just sort of shooting the breeze. My friend was standing behind me, and he was
responding to all of my questions and comments.
After about 2 minutes of chatting, I turned around to see him resting his
eyes in the front of the truck, 20 or so feet away. I didn't hear the car door
open or anything, but there he was, in the truck when a mere 10 seconds earlier
I thought he was right behind me, talking with me. I heard him talking to me.
When I went to the car I asked him how he got the truck so fast. He said he
didn't hurry, he was just the first one. "What were we just talking about?" I
asked him. He said he didn't know what I was talking about. I told him I was
just talking with someone I thought was him, and he was answering back, and he
said it wasn't him, he had been in the truck for nearly 20 minutes.
Now completely scared, we raced out of the hills and tried frantically to find
the freeway. Once we got back into town, we knew how to get to the freeway, so
we were feeling a little better. On this particular on ramp, it was a sharp turn
to get on from the road we were on, almost a U turn, so you can't really see
what's on the onramp until you turn completely. When we turned onto the onramp,
there in our headlight maybe 30 feet in front of our truck were four coyotes,
just standing and blocking our way. They just sat there staring at us and my
friend had to slam on the brakes. We sat there staring at each other for what
felt like an eternity but was most likely 10 seconds and We started to smell
something that smelled like offal. We were all screaming about what to do. A stench
so terrible I have yet to smell something as bad.
As the coyotes shifted and
dropped their heads, we could swear that we saw red in their eyes, so I told my
friend to step on it. The powerful Ford F-250 roared towards the demon coyotes
and when we braced for when we thought we would run over at least one of them,
we felt nothing, and saw nothing in the rear view mirror. We made it home in
record time, and saw nothing more of the Skinwalkers. To this day, I have not
seen another Skinwalker, but I later found that talking about them attracts
them. I don't anymore, if you couldn't already guess.
-Paul