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Friday, August 06, 2021

Don't Say The Word 'Skinwalker!'

A teen describes his encounters at a Durango, Colorado boarding school and while hiking. The events may have occurred as a result of saying the word 'skinwalker.' Interesting narrative.

I was directed to the following account:

"To finish off my last year of high school, I had to go to a school which was located about 10-15 miles away from the nearest town in Durango, Colorado (2017-18). It was a boarding school and I lived there with about 30 other students and teachers. When I first got there I had never heard the term skinwalker until one of my classmates mentioned it, so I got curious and looked it up. Google made it seem like a skinwalker was just some mere joke, stating it’s a “magical transforming creature” so we would always say “watch out for the skinwalkers!” and nobody really took it seriously.

The campus was huge, probably about 20 - 30 acres of land next to a river. About two weeks after I got there I was walking around the campus and noticed an Indian burial ground about 75 feet away from my cabin (there was about 20 cabins at the whole place and each could only fit two people to live in).

One night my roommate and I were up around midnight playing Call of Duty and such when we started hearing sounds of some very large animal full force sprinting into the back of our cabin multiple times. We were freaked the f*cked out. Our school didn’t allow guns so we had no choice but to double lock the door and close the shades. Even the night security guard came by because he thought we were walking around outside and causing a havoc at 12:00 am (he came by about every hour to check on everyone and make sure everything was fine, he was a cool guy though). He told us he was convinced we were outside but after we told him what happened and after he saw that both of our faces were pale white, he sort of believed us.

Weird sh*t like this would continue to happen about once or twice a week after that for about two months. There was random scratches we heard on our window, or a whole bunch of lights in the middle of the field that we would see in the distance through our window, screams, whistles, etc. The people in the neighboring cabins and I would always talk about similar experiences but stopped shortly after a native that went to the school told us talking about skinwalkers attracts them.

It was getting to the point where I had no choice but to tell someone. I decided to have a meeting with my principal and talk to him about it on behalf of everyone there. What he said freaked me out. He told me back in 2010, he was working late at this school one night and as he walked out of his office, he saw someone sprinting into the cafeteria, ripping papers off the wall as it ran by he thought it was a student. He chased whatever it was into the cafeteria, which was a one way in, one way out. Only one door. As he got into the cafeteria and turned the lights on, there was nobody there.

My roommate dropped out of school about halfway through the year because of this and I couldn’t find anyone else to live with in that cabin. So I was forced to listen to sh*t like this all alone for months on end. I was on the verge of dropping out, but I couldn’t because I was so close to finishing my senior year.

About 3/4 through the year, our school had a quarterly thing where we go on a week long hiking trip somewhere around the country. There was 5 different groups, and my group was going on a hike up Humphrey’s Peak in Arizona. We camped the whole way back to Colorado. It was a 6 hour drive to Humphrey’s peak, and the hike took most of the day. First night was not bad, and I wasn’t thinking of any skinwalker as I haven’t been bothered by them for weeks at this point.

The next day we spend most of it driving/hiking to the next camp spot, which is a random place in the middle of the desert (5 or 6 miles down a trail) as we set up our hammocks and start to relax. An older aged woman in a bikini appears from behind a hill we were all at. It was very unsettling as I noticed she didn’t have a water bottle, backpack or anything 6 miles into this trail. She proceeds to start talking to one of my teachers, and she says she knows this place well and can show him around. They start walking and everyone couldn’t help but notice her walk. It was like she broke both her knees and was limping. But not limping. I can’t even describe how weird of a walk she had. A couple minutes go by and my teacher returns without her, and he walks by everyone and goes strait into his tent. I didn’t think too much of it but thought her walk was kind of weird.

On the third day we finally get to Tucker Flat, AZ. After a long day of driving, and another long hike into the desert we end up on a giant rock and decide to camp there. We are in the dead middle of nowhere. It’s getting dark, so we start a fire, make food and shortly after go to bed. Too bad I didn’t sleep at all the whole night. I spent most of the night staring at the top of my tent as from what happened the night before, still thinking about that creepy lady.

It was at about 10 or 11 when we started hearing some noises that sounded like rustling at first, and then those rustles turned into footsteps, and then back into small rustles again. As my tentmate and I both hear it getting closer and closer to our tent I whisper, “You hear that?” Nearly sh*tting myself hoping it wouldn’t hear us. He didn’t answer me, so I looked over at him, and he was staring at me dead in the eyes bugging out with his knife in his hand. I grabbed mine too and slowly put it to my chest. I knew what we had to do, but I didn’t know if I had the balls to do it. The footsteps finally stopped. I got a sense of relief and decided it was a perfect time to open the tent and check out what was making all that noise. As I open up my side of the tent, I am greeted by a pair of eyes staring right back at me from less than a foot away. What was it? A black cat in the dead middle of the desert. At this point there was two scenarios going through my head.

When my tentmate peeks his head and sees the cat, his jaw drops. How the f*ck is a cat 5 miles into a hiking trail in the dead middle of the desert? At 11pm? We were stumped and decided walking back to the trailhead and getting in the van was our safest bet. So we ended up walking the whole 5-6 mile hike back at 11 pm and slept in the van. The whole time we heard rustling behind us and whenever we used our flash, there were a pair of eyes looking at us from a distance.

I ended up reading all sorts of information about skinwalkers, and a shiver went down my spine as I read that skinwalkers often turn into a small dog or cat to trick whoever they’re messing with.

This school was by far the weirdest place I’ve had to live at and I thank God everyday that I do not live there anymore. This is just one of the experiences I’ve had and it only got worse throughout the year.

If you want avoid all this sh*t happening to you, just don’t say the word 'skinwalker." G

NOTE: I believe that the boarding school in question is Colorado Timberline Academy - 37.449550, -107.804741 - Lon

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