Alot of times, one hears about chance encounters, usually along road sides, with skinwalkers. There is a big difference between a ghoul like apparation painted white and black jumping out of a car at you and actually being visited. The process of visitations can be quite slow. You may have one event starting it one night and maybe another a few nights later until it slowly builds to skinwalkers actually moving around the outside of your home in the wee hours. Although it is slow, it is also relentless. A string of visitations can last anywhere from two weeks or longer, depending on how it's handled.
There are stories out there that signal when a skinwalker may make their arrival. It's said that they will come on the darkest of nights, when there is no moon or the moon has already set, when the wind gusts and you can hear dogs barking and howling all around your neighborhood. Sounds pretty creepy, huh? That's because it is. Skinwalkers are tricksters and it makes perfect sense why they would choose these kind of evenings in particuliar for their visits. They have the protection of the dark, which they can blend into if need be. There is no chance of a full moon rising and brightening the night. The wind gusting around blows their scent in all directions and riles up the whole neighborhood of animals, who may be thinking a coyote, a mountain lion or a bear has wandered in. It can make it very difficult to pin down the direction from where they are coming.
Skinwalkers do not rush in full force onto the property of their victim. On the contrary, they take their time. To rush in could equal death and they use recognizance, rather like the military does, to prevent any surprises. However, they generally do make their presence known and that is by playing their flute. Flute music is the calling card of the skinwalker. If one is visiting the reservation, one shouldn't even whistle at night. Flute music at night represents witchcraft and even a whistle at night could put off the wrong message entirely. We have heard two types of flute song coming from skinwalkers. The first is very mournful and slow, the second is more erratic without any seeming melody whatsoever. As I've already mentioned, when I heard the second type, I thought some child was goofing around with their recorder.
Flute music of a skinwalker serves at least two purposes that we perceive. Just like a Singer has their songs for different types of healing, the skinwalker has functions for their own songs. We do not know what harm the different types of songs intend. That would take an actual skinwalker to explain. But what we can say is that the song is like the first spell that is sent out against the victim. The irony is that even if you hear flute in the night, it doesn't necessarily mean that they are coming after you (unless you are living in a remote part of the reservation with no neighbors around). In a neighborhood, it could be the guy down the street or a woman two blocks away. If nothing else happens, it's fairly safe to say that you weren't the target. Some may arrange a blessing way at this first sign, just to be on the safe side.
Skinwalkers will enter the property in order to seek out material for which they can create a medicine bundle against their victim. Whether they do it long before they alert the victim to their presence or do it after, it is hard to say. It's quite possible that they send in a scout to find any useful materials and once the medicine bundle is made, begin the visitation. This may be items left in an unlocked car or even from the garbage can. One of the things that a person living on the reservation has to get used to is the smell of burning garbage. Alot of Navajo will burn their garbage to prevent from getting witched so the smell can be quite a common smell. The classic items that they seek out are hair, nail clippings and menstrual blood but as an extra precaution, personal objects are not commonly left outside. If my daughter drops a hairclip outside, we pick it up. Leaving it out overnight could be tempting for a witch to pick up for a bundle.
The medicine bundle is the most important part of the skinwalker's visitation. It can contain poisons, bones--whatever they are chosing for the intended harm and the collected personal objects. If one discovers a medicine bundle buried on their property, it is not touched because they are dangerous. A medicine man is called in to negate the bundles intentions and dispose of it. This is just as dangerous of a task for a medicine man. My inlaws remember a healthy young medicine man that was called in to dispose a medicine bundle placed against one of the family members. As the young man was playing his flute, it cracked and this was a very bad omen for the medicine man. Shortly afterward, the young medicine man fell ill and was dead 1-2 weeks later. Considering that poisons are the most notable weapons of a skinwalker, I think it is safe to assume that a medicine bundle is laced with them.
The placement of this medicine bundle is the most important act of a skinwalker. However, it may take some time before it is actually placed. In between the initial flute playing, there can be a series of events. The victim may see or hear strange sounds coming from just off the property. I remember hearing the distinct sound of a terrified horse being ridden back and forth beyond the fence while Sissy whined away beneath our window. The trauma of the animals was really quite horrible to hear. I think the most important aspect of this part of the visitation is making sure that the victim knows that they are present and they are there for that particuliar family. This can go on night after night if the conditions are right. Skinwalkers will only come after sundown and have a tendency to come quite late at night. A visit can start around midnight or 2 am and, depending on the area, can last anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour or so. They will be infinitely more brazen in a remote setting.
At some point, perhaps when they feel confident enough, they will enter the yard of the victim. They will peer into open windows, creep around the yard and possibly hunt for an ideal location to bury the medicine bundle. They may go a step further and start climbing onto the roof of the home and will be quite noisy about it. This is key. They aren't trying to hide their presence whatsoever. They are trying to disrupt the home as much as possible. It is thought that one of the reasons why they do this is because while the attention of those living in the home may be on the noisy, noticeable ones, a skinwalker could be placing and burying a medicine bundle somewhere on the property amidst all the distraction. They don't want the victim to know for sure if a bundle has been placed and they certainly don't want them to know where it was buried either. The belief is that the longer a medicine bundle can sit on the property, the greater ill it can cause. One can wonder why they would make a ruckus at all. I personally feel that it is similiar to other forms of witchcraft in this matter. A curse isn't as good of a curse if you don't know that you've been cursed. My husband doesn't disagree with this idea but it's impossible to know for sure why they must be so disruptive.
Visitations may not even stop after the medicine bundle is placed. Again, it's hard to say because by the time a medicine man has been called in, the bundle could've been sitting there for a week or a month or longer. It's interesting to note that if a bundle has been placed, a medicine man often can somehow sense its presence on the property and pinpoint its location. Some might say that it would indicate some sort of duplicity on the part of a medicine man but I think that that is rather unlikely based on my own perception of medicine men. They seem to be very, very good people. I personally think that there is something about medicine men that is like a better awareness of their surroundings. Perhaps they can pick up physical disturbances in the soil far better than others or they can somehow sense something ill amongst the natural. Irregardless, the phenomena is there and the medicine man places himself in harm's way to dispose of it.
In remote areas, visitations can be really quite relentless and turn into mini-wars. There are no neighbors nearby to assist the victim and their family, there is no phone to call the police and when it's dark out there, it's really dark. This is probably the most ideal setting for a group of skinwalkers to make their visits. They know that their victims' options are limited and they will run circles (on all fours) around the property, climb on roofs, and peer into windows. There can be several visible and several more that are unseen, hidden on the property by the cover of night or off in the distance, perhaps playing their flute. It is really difficult to establish how many can be present at any given visit but the numbers could be as high as half a dozen or much more.
The initial response to a visit on a remote part of the reservation is for the men of the home to grab the guns and start patrolling the outside of their home. It was during one of these patrols that one of my husband's uncle was knocked unconscious by a skinwalker. Imagine for a moment that you are at a home in the middle of nowhere on the reservation and there is no phone with which you can call for help. There are skinwalkers seemingly everywhere outside your home. You need to go outside amongst these foul smelling, animal skin, ash and black paint covered people, some of whon can drop down onto four for a quick burst of speed,can see you in the blackness of night far better than you can see them and they all mean you and your family absolute ill. You step outside, armed with a shotgun and a flashlight into pitch black. You hear a scrambling on the roof above you and look up to see nothing but that doesn't mean that one wasn't there, looking down at you. You round the corner of the house, flicking your flashlight around, catch a glint of red eyes nearby and that's the last thing you remember. You didn't even have time to fire your gun.
The outcome of a rural visit is not always like this. It depends on how fast the family is alerted to a problem. This is where being attentive to the reaction of the animals on the property comes in handy. It's more common for it to be an even battle. Yes, skinwalkers are all over the yard but they haven't settled in. It becomes a gunfight and the skinwalkers drop down on their fours to disappear into the night. Even with all the gunfire, it's unlikely that a skinwalker will get hit. They are too fast and their skins tend to betray where their actual bodies are.
My husband recalls many nights on the ranch that were like this and told me a story last night about one evening in particuliar. He was sitting outside with his grandparents one night and they were enjoying a quiet evening looking at the stars and trying to spot satellites as they crossed the sky. Suddenly, a massive volley of gunfire erupted off in the distance from their home. His grandfather turned to look at my husband, half chuckled and said "I hope they don't head this way...". I think it is safe to say that quiet rural evenings may not always be a constant on remote parts of the reservation.
This a brief rundown of what visitations can entail and are like. I'm sure that my husband will probably think of more to add. Visitations are really quite unpleasant. There is nothing more frightening, I think, than waking up at 2:30 in the morning to the sounds of a whimpering dog and movement in your backyard. Just knowing that they intend you as much ill as they can possibly achieve is, quite simply, chilling.
Stephanie
In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil.--Ralph Waldo Emerson
