I thought the skinwalker meme was pretty funny, i discovered today that there are actually people who believe in them. Do you know anyone who believes in them? Maybe some stories?

33 comments

  3. I can only guess what it is based on watching Supernatural. Don’t know anyone who believes in them though.

  6. I am so confused. I just post in this subreddit 2 minutes before this post but mine never shows up

  7. What kind of question is this? Only an idiot would believe in something so stupid, I’m walking in the woods right now and having seen anyhrdnjrbrmdfkrjnfkfnemdmekssjdje dndjdkejddjxjnnnnnnnm

  8. I don’t know anyone who believes in them, but I’ve heard that Native Americans in the Southwest apparently don’t even say the word because it might attract them.

  9. Very few. It comes from Navajo culture and they don’t share much about them to outsiders. The commonly known version is basically a run-of-the-mill cryptid.

  11. Probably similar numbers to those who believe in thunderbirds or kokopelli. More than zero, still extremely rare.

  12. I just fought off a whole pack of them (they were disguised as a 4th grade class at the flight museum)

  13. Probably not a large percentage of the population but I’ve been in the r/skinwalkers sub for a while and it is filled with people who seem to believe in them wholeheartedly lol. They’re always discussing things like what weapons to use in case of a skinwalker attack. So there are definitely some believers.

  14. I don’t think belief in or even knowledge of skinwalkers is common outside of like Navajo people

  15. A longtime Native friend of mine has a few elder family members who believe in them, and one of my favorite sources of cringe porn is the skinwalker subreddit; you’ll find plenty of believers there. So people who believe in them definitely exist, but I’d wager they’re an extreme minority, maybe numbered in the thousands in a country of about a third of a billion people. But I’m just pulling those numbers out of my ass, so take it for a grain of salt.

  16. That’s from the Navajo tradition, which is pretty much limited to the SW United States. The local (Minnesota/Wisconsin) natives have the legend of the Wendingo, which is a different kind of being.

    I am not a NA, so I don’t have anything more than casual knowledge. (And don’t intend disrespect by calling it a legend. I didn’t want to say the local natives “believe” in the Wendingo because I sure as hell don’t claim to know what Ojibwe/Chippewa people believe.)

  17. Skinwalkers are a Navajo thing. The Navajo make up a fraction of the Native American community, who make up around 2% of the US population. Similarly, most Americans do not believe in the Wendigo, a monster in northern Plains and Great Lakes cultures.

  18. I don’t think I believe in skinwalkers. With that said, I was born and raised in the Sonoran desert (it’s in the southwest united states) and my friends and I used to spend a lot of late in the desert. Very weird things happened that I’ll never understand how or why they did. My point being, idk if I believe in them but I understand why some might.

  19. It’s caught on with a subset of the internet. How many of them actually believe in them and aren’t just treating it like some other spooky story is a tone’s guess. It’s helped by the fact that it involves Native Americans, which in some peoples minds adds an additional layer of “legitimacy” that something like, say, Mothman, lacks.

    It’s kind of ironic that the Navajo are pretty reluctant to talk about it with outsiders, because a lot of the internet community that seems to believe in them won’t shut the hell up about them.

  20. Nope, only time I hear about irl is when we hear something weird while camping and jokingly say to each other “oh shit it’s a skinwalker”

    On the internet, skinwalkers are a pretty popular monster for memes because of how their abilities fit pretty well with what mentally ill people tend to believe when it comes to why they’re paranoid

  21. Not really even sure what a skinwalker is, but apparently it’s an Indian myth. But this guy https://the-demonic-paradise.fandom.com/wiki/Fastachee

    I’m fairly certain I’ve seen. I was driving home late one night with my wife. Coming into our neighborhood I could see something in the middle of the road As I got closer I thought it was a kids toy that was left there in the middle of the road. I was trying not to run directly over it, and when I got closer it’s head turned around and looked right at me. I can only describe it as a Smurf. My wife actually said something about a minute later and asked what it was. She saw it as well, and remembers it just like I do. I looked back after I went over it, and it was gone. It’s something we couldn’t explain, but it was something that I’ll never forget. It was on 2 feet, and can only say it looked like a tiny little person with a pointy hat on.

  24. Depends on who you consider Americans. Most native people fuck yes do. As a white girl growing up in Dine country, oh yeah.

  25. Was not aware of any meme, but it sounds suspiciously like it might be disrespectful, since it concerns an Indian spiritual belief.

    There is lots of real ethnographic information out there, if you care to look and it appears in popular culture from time to time. Most notably in the novels of Tony Hillerman.

  29. Not many, probably just the Navajo if we’re talking legit belief in legit beings, as opposed to the pop culture-ization of them and similar Native entities.

  30. That’s a Navajo legend, and although some of the stories have leaked into the broader American culture, it’s not shared with outsiders of the Navajo much, and doesn’t have that big of a cultural impact on America as a whole. You’d probably find more people who believe in Bigfoot.

  31. Well, since a lot of people are mentioning them, as a Navajo person myself I know quite a *lot* of people who believe in them. When I was younger and my siblings and I were staying with family on the rez we weren’t allowed outside after sundown moreso due to the belief in them than anything else. They aren’t generally discussed.

  32. I’m not religious or believe in ghost or the supernatural really. But there’s just something about the skinwalkers that I can’t handle.

    Some joe blow telling me about a local monster? Yeah whatever.

    Some Native American telling me not to go into a certain area because xyz, yeah I’m going to listen to them fo sho. I’m not gonna play like that.

  33. I don’t think skinwalkers are regarded much outside of the Navajo community, but stick people figure in a lot of campfire tales, probably because their behaviors serve as folk explanations for unexplained noises and other phenomena that people experience out in the woods – not to mention a few intentional pranks.

    A sound like cackling laughter in the middle of the night, deep in the woods? Probably a bird or racoons humping or something, but it’s creepy so why not call it stick people. Sound of multiple people laughing and carrying on, like a party, in the middle of the woods? Probably an actual campfire party, with the sound travelling farther than you would expect in the quiet woods when your ears have adjusted to the silence and you can hear fainter, more distant sounds than you are accustomed to, but yeah, that’s stick people. Wake up in the morning and can’t find your latrine shovel? Well you probably just forgot where you put it but stick people are said to mischievously steal or move tools in the night…

    Plus, stick people present opportunities for scary pranks, so the legend is carried forward.

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