The Navajo, Skin-walkers, and Creepy-pasta: Modernized Myth

[Slender: The Eight Pages, Parsec Productions, June 2012]

Creepy-pasta is a strange entomological hiccup off the term copy-pasta — a short blurb of text formatted to make an image or flash fiction — only creepy; horror as a genre lends itself very well to first and second-hand accounts and the internet forums, which are exclusively first or second hand accounts, are the perfect breeding ground for genre mutation. Creepy-pasta has even jumped into other forms of media, from text forums on the early internet to audio/video formats on video sharing sites like YouTube and even video games. Slender: The Eight Pages anyone?

A favorite content source for creepy-pasta are non-European cultural creatures. The wendigo from the Algonquin people, the Skinwalker from the Navajo (who we will be focusing on), urban legends from Japan and China, Djinn and other powerful, shape-shifting creatures are all very popular subjects for depriving yourself of sleep at two-in-the-morning.

[“Changing Skinwalker” Source: Legends of America]

Every culture seems to have an animalian or grotesque, inhuman transformation among their folklore. Stories of people turning into monsters or monsters disguised as people are absolutely everywhere. It’s burned into the human psyche.

The Navajo skinwalker is an especially unsettling creature because it began as a human and then chose to become a monster. Legends of America defines the creature as “a type of harmful witch who has the ability to turn into, possess, or disguise themselves as an animal…Sometimes, these witches evolved from living their lives as respected healers or spiritual guides, who later chose to use their powers for evil. Though they can be either male or female, they are more often male.” They gain these abilities through a ritualized murder of a family member, usually a sibling or close relative, and then take the skin and bones of predatory animals — such as the wolf, coyote, cougars, or bear — to take on its shape and powers for specific, often malicious, tasks. As such “the Navajo consider it taboo for its members to wear the pelt of any predatory animal.”

While not the most popular source of inspiration for internet horror writers, shapeshifters like the Skinwalker and other mimics of human or animal behavior are personal encounters and just-realistic-enough to greatly unsettle their audience. Even the most skeptical horror fan can enjoy a first-hand account within a modern setting. Despite the liberties that were taken with the Wendigo, Skinwalkers tend to have a more faithful representation in internet horror. To exemplify this, I’ll be looking at two/three short creepy-pasta stories by u/ronindog and Max Minton (a.k.a. HolyHeretic) on Reddit and creepypasta.com respectively to compare the features mentioned for the creature to Legends of America’s explanation of Navajo myth.

In order of listing, ronindog describes a skinwalker as “Old warriors resurrected as skinless men” who are half animalian with the legs of a goat and warped deer snouts. They stand seven feet while hunched over. The description of this creature reminds more or the wendigo from this image, although with the head of a coyote instead of a deer.

They also describe a powerful sulfuric odor and the stench of rot accompanying the creature and lists its powers as shapeshifting, vocal mimicry, superhuman speed (running beside the car at over 50mph), and the predilection towards skinning victims alive in order to wear their skin for one hour.

Max Milton says the skinwalker looks “pale white, and looked a little like a man, but not quite human. It had arms and legs like ours, but it sat like a monkey, hunched over. And its hands weren’t normal; it had long fingers with claws at the end.” The creature has inhuman strength and terrifies local wildlife. The narrator’s grandfather was ripped to pieces in mere seconds by the skinwalker of this story, and although it didn’t try to change shape, it certainly had human-like intelligence. It makes noises and bangs in the house while trying to hunt them down. While these features don’t perfectly match up with skinwalker myths, it’s important to note that many more works of creepy-goodness do than for stories about their north-eastern cousins, the wendigos.

[Wendigo, from “Monkey-Paw” via Deviant Art]

One possible reason that the skinwalker mythos hasn’t drifted so extremely as the Wendigo might be because it’s less popular. Google statistics show about 4,570,000 results for the wendigo with 1,400 results in google scholar while there are only 1,510,000 search results for skinwalker, 452 results on google scholar and very few solid publications about the creatures. That is about 33% of wendigos general searches and 32% of scholar searches. Mind you, that’s just keyword searching and does not filter for useable content. Both the wendigo and the skinwalker are native myth-creatures that prey upon and stem from human beings, yet the modern form of the wendigo is warped from its original appearance. The addition of antlers and deer-like traits are recent and pervasive. The skinwalker hasn’t had that exposure and therefore, hasn’t experienced the same mythical drift. There is also more tight-lipped cultural importance about the skinwalkers. “Traditionally, the Navajo will not speak with outsiders about these creatures, for fear of retribution by the skinwalkers. For that matter, it is a taboo subject amongst the natives themselves” and tradition is a powerful thing.

References

Weiser-Alexander, Kathy, and David Alexander, eds. “Navajo Skinwalkers — Witches of the South-West.” Legends of America. Legends of America. Accessed October 1, 2019. https://www.legendsofamerica.com/navajo-skinwalkers/.