Here is the full interview of the subscriber telling me about his experience. The gaps in the recording are removal of names of others to support anonymity of the subscriber as he describes his experience.
Transcription:
Sub: SO um, ya I have a good army one, you’re talking about the skinwalker…..story?
Tasha: Anything you want.
Sub: Have I told you the Skinwalker story?
Tasha: I don’t think you have so I don’t know what questions to ask so i’m just gonna listen.
Sub: Ok, Um,
Tasha: I think you were going to that one night and then we didn’t have enough time.
Sub: I think ______ didn’t want me too. She doesn’t like me telling scary stories because then we have to go home and then it gets dark outside. She loves horror movies, she likes to watch them in daylight. And then i’m not allowed to talk about them for the rest of the night. Because honestly I get scared to the point where she’s trying to comfort me.
Tasha: Good wife.
Sub: Yeah! I just, I have an overactive imagination to the point where it , um it gets scary for me.
Tasha: So you’re saying i’m exacerbating the problem by making you do this interview at 9 at night?
Sub: Ya but i think it’s ok, I think this, THIS story is one that I often question in my own sanity. Because I don’t know how it could be possible. If that makes sense. It’s one of those instances where when you experience it at the time it feels so visceral and real. But later when you look back on it you almost are embarrassed to talk about it. Because, how could that have happened? How could that actually be real? I was in ah… basic combat training. A lot of things were changing for me in my life at that point. And uh, hehehe In basic training you go through several different training scenarios to make you a better soldier. Yeah so, in basic training you go through several different kinds of training exercises. And ah, one of them is called Night L and Nav.
I was squad leader at the time, and you take your squad out at night. Um, no lights are permitted whatsoever. You’re given a map, you’re given a compass, and you’re given grid coordinates. Your job is to start at a point and be able to find the next grid coordinates. And when you find those grid coordinates it will have on it. A Grid coordinates to another point. And it leads you in kind of like a, a trail, and you should be able to get back to the place you started. And this is to train you to do um, combat at night and not get lost. And because it’s nighttime you can’t use your typical methods for navigating. You can’t use like the distant hills, or a tree or some kind of object you can see on the horizon and unfortunately on this particular night, there was no moon. There was no stars, it was the first time i’d ever seen heat lighting. Do you know what that is?
Tasha: Explain it to me.
Sub: So it’s almost weird. It’s lightning that does not’ have thunder. And it happens on really warm summer nights, and, in my experience it wasn’t even like the typical white or yellow lightning. It was like purple and green and all these other colors. These clouds that were high up above us kind of make this crackling sound. And there wasn’t like a definitive boom of thunder afterwards, but you could see this serpentine lightning in the sky. It was the creepiest thing ever. But that kind of set the mode for the entire evening. Our drill sergeant walks us off of the FOB (Forward Operating Base) that we were training at, straight into the wilderness. And he gives us a pair of NODs (Which are Night Observation Devices) that someone would be able to use to read the compass. Then he gives us, um, chem lights, which are chemical lights, where you break the filament inside, and shake it and it glows.
Tasha: Like a glow stick?
Sub: like a glow stick, yeah (laughs) a glow stick. They’re called chemlights in the army. And, um, but these are not to be visible. Because if a drill sergeant sees chem lights, he’s going to sneak up on you in the darkness, and you’re gonna be dead. Often times they’ll carry these red markers and draw them across your throat, meaning you’re killed. And you don’t want to die, that’s a bad thing to have happen in training exercises like this. And it was simple against the rules to use any kind of light, so the chem light was more for like emergency purposes. Um, you had in your squad, you march, and that’s a relative term because we’re trudging through like the bush, like hills and sand and dirt, and this is out in the Oklahoma, um wilderness of fort Sill. So when you march in this column formation, it’s a straight line, That’s what a column formation means, um, The person at the front of the line, is counting their steps, and you usually want the soldier who has accurate pacing. Pacing is where you take a certain amount of steps and you measure that, and then that measurement equals a certain amount of distance. So HE, is telling you how far you’re going. And then the person at the very back of the formation, is doing the exact same thing. So that you have duplicity. So two people doing the same thing you should get relatively similar distances between the two of them. You want the person at the front to be the tallest, and person at the back to be the shortest, generally. So that you can kinda figure out an average of where you are going. And the person in the middle, um, looks at… has the NODs, and looks at the compass. And he shoots your hazmats, and he finds out um where you’re supposed to go, what direction you’re supposed to march in. So we set up our squad, as squad leader I’m somewhere in the middle, and I have my weapon at the low ready, i’m pulling security. Which, these weapons are basically useless they’re M4 Carbines, and M16’s, but they have what’s called Blank Firing Adapters at the end of them. They’re these red box..boxes, Little metal boxes that screw into the muzzle of your rifle. And make it impossible for you to shoot your weapon. Simply for training experience I suppose, but we take it serious. We pretend like, these rifles can actually do something besides turn into ah… um… A club in a time of need. So together, me and my squad of 12-15 soldiers march off into the wilderness. A little bit of background history on Fort Sill oklahoma. There was a certain dark point in our US history that we don’t often talk about, and it’s called the trail of tears. Are you familiar with that?
Tasha: Yeah.
Sub: What do you know about the Trail of Tears?
Tasha: I ah, indian exhalation, like manually making them march across this plain. Into an internment camp of some sort and many people died on their way?
Sub: That’s correct. So um, people are um. These native american peoples were like you said They were rounded up, they were exiled, they were massacred. And the survivors of this massacre were made to march barefoot and um, unsheltered for hundred and hundreds of miles. Through all manner of weather and terrain. Bodies littered the trail that led to Oklahoma, specifically to Fort Sill where they were put into internment camps at Fort Sill. Fort sill is famous when it comes to Native American legends because it is the burial place of, um, very famous tribesman-warrior named Geronimo. Which i’m sure you’ve heard before. The airborne infantry would yell geronimo when they jump out of the back of airplanes in old 1940’s movies. But Geronimo was a very brave warrior who became infamous at Fort Sill Oklahoma. And he was buried at Fort Sill oklahoma in kind of a modernized indian burial ground that had headstones and stuff, but that’s not how indians bury their dead. They don’t bury them with headstones, and many of the indian burial grounds at fort Sill are not necessarily plotted. But they are off limits.
My uncle, the reason that this kind of resonates with me, is my uncle Daryll, he is Navajo. His mother is the Big Water people, and he came from the Navajo reservation so he was raised on them. And he told me once a little bit about navajo tradition and legends which I’ll come back too in a moment. In the meantime let’s talk about this Lan Nav experience I had. So we’re walking and everything is going fine. We reach out first plot point. And we find the coordinates to the next plot point, we’re making good time. It’s kind of a competition to see which squads can finish it the fastest. And I was convinced that I had the best squad EVER. and we were marching pretty fast, and we were finding these plot points fairly easily. I decided to give my squad a rest. We came to rest, and because i was super gung-ho even though this was just a training exercise, I had us all sitting in this defensive position, all of our weapons pointed out. Our backs facing each other. And it’s good practice. As we’re sitting there, I hear John Muller, utter a swear word under his breath. So I come to him, and he is in charge of the compass. And John isn’t looking at his compass he’s looking off into the wilderness. And i’m like “hey what’s going on buddy? Sup?” And he’s like “I just saw something.” I’m like, what? Is it the drill sergeant? You know maybe i’m thinking like the drill sergeant is shadowing us on this night land nav. And he’s like “I don’t know it’s over there. I just saw it move.” So I was like “Whoa, let me take a look.” So I take the NOD’s off his head, and I put them on mine and I look over where he’s pointing. He’s like “It’s just over there.” And NOD’s are kind of weird because even though you can see everything, in like this super vivid… like…
Tasha: Shades of green?
Sub: Shades of mercury. It’s like …this like… silver color. And um, it must have just been the model NOD’s that I was using, but it was all silver. And it’s weird because there’s no depth perception whatsoever because you’re picking up on Ultra Violet light, which is EVERYWHERE. And since this light is everywhere it doesn’t cast the same shadows that you would expect it too. THings actually appear closer than what they actually are. Things appear sometimes right next to you. As I was looking through these NOD’s, looking for any kind of movement I see the plain, the flat oklahoma plain, there’s a little bit of a divot, in the land. ANd I see this pale grey mound.
As I watch it, I see it rise and fall slowly. ANd I’m thinking to myself is this some kind of wild animal? And I didn’t have a great working knowledge of the wildlife that lived in Oklahoma. I think at that point we’d seen deer, but I was like.. Is this a deer laying on it’s side? It looked to me like a deer, laying on its side breathing. Or a cow, something like that. As i’m watching this mound rise and fall slowly. I’m thinking about all the possible wild animals that might be out here with me. And all the sudden it moves and it stands. And in that instant i’m thinking “BEAR”.
Tasha: All fours?
Sub: Um, Slowly at first. And the way it moved was definitely more predatorial. SO I was thinking coyote, mountain lion. As it came to full stature, I was thinking “Bear.” and it was at that moment that I realized that it was actually a man. It’s kind of weird that in a moment of ah, of ah, fear, and adrenaline you can recall the strangest things. It was at that moment I thought of these stories my uncle Daryl had told me about his experiences on the native american reservation. And he said, he said, before he was converted to being christian.
He actually would go to these native american celebrations at different times of the year where they would dress up in costume, and they would dance around. And part of this native american experience was to invite the spirits of wild animals to come inhabit your body. And it would be a great honor to have one of these wild animals inhabit your body. And without going into too much detail he said, that a lot of really eerie thing happened on that night. Years later, when he was a christian, the local church there would have special events and would invite all the converts to come have a night of fun at the church, while everyone else was going to these festivals.
They’d go to this festival, they’d dance around, they’d smoke peyote, these missionaries want to help their membership stay strong. It was on a particular night like this where he was with the missionaries, and after he was giving them a ride home. And as they were driving home, they… he looks up ahead on the road and he sees these two men stumbling drunk, it appears, and so he pulls off into the left shoulder kind of give them a wide berth as he drives past. He’s got the two missionaries in the seat next to him, and as he drives past these two men. The light kind of glints off their eye’s in kind of a really weird way, he remembers. And, the Missionaries trail these men, they watch them, thier heads turning to follow them as he passes them. And um he hears them gasp in horror, he looks in his rearview mirror, and he sees that these two men who have been stumbling drunk down the side of the road were now chasing his truck.
He thought is was strange, but not too strange because maybe they were looking for trouble. But then he noticed how fast he was going. He was driving about 25 MPH and they were gaining on him. Which is inhuman. Inhumanly fast. Later the missionaries told him, that as they passed, they said that their legs looked like they were broken. Because their knees weren’t bending the way ours bend forward. They were bending backwards like an ostrich. And I remember what my uncle told me that they called these people. They call them Skinwalkers. People who have become possessed by these animals and are able to do inhuman feats.
And that story instantly came into my mind with a single word, that one word. The moment I saw this man, standing…. I can’t give you an actual distance because I don’t know because the NOD’s just kind of skew your sense of distance. He looked like he was no more than 10 feet away from me. Standing fully naked with some kind of mask over his face. I wouldn’t say it was an animal mask, but it wasn’t a human face. And at that moment, I hear next to me utter another swear word. And he starts running in the opposite direction and immediately, that moment of terror on ______ part, affected my entire squad almost instantly. Everyone is running, everyone is like crashing through the brush. Me included. And i’m trying to run with NOD’s over one eye, and my other eye seeing only Darkness basically, trying to run. And thinking the entire time, there is some inhuman creature chasing me, gaining on me directly behind me and every little branch of shrubbery that catches me. That scratches, I think i’m being grabbed. I just remember, I couldn’t run fast enough. And likewise, Everyone else in my group couldn’t run fast enough. We’re running as fast as we possibly can. And most of the people don’t even know why we’re running. But we get to a road, and we finally stop.
Everyone is like “What is going on? What did you see? Why are we running?” you know? saying “There’s some guy. He looked like an animal. But then he was a man. And He was standing and he didn’t have any clothes on…” And he’s freaking out. And so everyone else is now freaking out going “What the heck? What are you talking about?How could that happen? Who was it? Who’s going to be out here naked? You know? And ah I’m like “Okay guys we need to calm down we need to focus, we need to get back to the FOB. And we don’t ’ know where we are because we’ve lost our way point. We don’t know where we are on this map. We could have ran a 100 Meters, we could have ran a quarter mile for all I know we were pretty scared. And now that ________ has spilled his guts and told the entire squad, everyone is scarred. Everyone is like “We need to get back NOW.” We don’t want to be in the darkness where this thing, in my mind, this CREATURE could be anywhere watching us just out of our view. And I’m the only one with NOD’s I’m the only one who can see and that almost makes it worse because everything looks the same, everything is the mercury silver in every direction that I look. And now everything looks like it’s moving because the blood is pumping in my head so loud. Making it sounds like footsteps. It’s causing distortions in my vision almost because i’m so scared. I finally get my wits about me, and I tell them “Ok, look here’s a road it’s got to lead somewhere let’s just ruck march on this road back to the FOB, it’s got to lead somewhere, I figured we ran in this general direction if we go this direction on the road we should be good. And right as we turn to start going down this road we hear this great rushing of air and this growl. And it’s slowly getting louder and louder and louder. And everyone freezes. We’re standing on the side of this road, and out of nowhere this vehicle come flying down this road. No lights. We see it for just a split second as it passes in the darkness. And it this old , like, 1940’s truck. Not even a Hum V but an old car with like the rounded fenders. And it has an Ambulance cross on the side of it. And then it’s gone. No explanation nothing. It was there one second, and then it was gone. And we all just kind of look at each other and said “you all saw that right? I mean everyone saw that?” we all agreed everyone had seen it, it did exist but how can we explain it? It couldn’t be explained, just like the figure that we saw in the wilderness couldn’t be explained. And so we quietly kind of assumed fear on all of our parts walked down this road back to the FOB. When we arrived back at the FOB, we were gone a lot longer than we were supposed to be because we lost our way , and it just took us a lot longer to go. We were walking in the wrong direction most of the time.
My drill sergeants furious that we’ve been gone for so long and everyone in my squad all at once are telling him “Drill sergeant! Drill Sergeant! We saw somebody out there.” And immediately his demeanor changes. And he’s like “You saw someone?” We were like “Ya we saw some guy out there, he was naked!” And now my drill sergeant almost gets this look of fear on him. You know and he’s like “Come with me” And that’s when he rounds up me and my two team leaders takes us to go see the commander, and the commander lays a map down and says “Show me exactly where you were on this map.” I can see the FOB and I know my drill sergeant walked us over in this direction, we were probably trekking around in this general area over here.” And then he turns on my drill sergeant and he says “What were you thinking!” He was actually angry, he was actually furious with him. And my drill sergeant he looks confused he like “You know, that’s where I went out earlier today and put out the plot points. He’s like “You NEVER go there. We’re not allowed to go there. That is indian burial grounds. Nobody is supposed to be in this area, EVER. It’s sacred for them, we made a promise that we wouldn’t walk on this area, that we would never go here. What were you thinking?” and I exchanged looks and I was absolutely sure that I had seen something, not entirely sure what I had seen but I think it was a skinwalker.
That’s all I have.
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