What Are Skinwalkers? (+ How to Spot Them)

There are few legends scarier than skinwalkers—aka, ancient witches in forests and deserts who can turn themselves into four-legged creatures that run supernaturally fast. But how do you actually tell the difference between a wild wolf, a woman on the side of the road, and a skinwalker? We’ll break down how you might be able to actually spot a skinwalker and cover a bunch of additional key info you may need to survive an encounter with one of these things (if they do actually exist).

Please be aware that skinwalkers are a part of indigenous culture and, therefore, the topic of skinwalkers should be treated with respect and awareness. Avoid any appropriation or misrepresentation of skinwalkers, their legends, or their imagery.

What do skinwalkers really look like?

Skinwalkers have a form that switches between a normal old man or woman and a ghoulish version of a four-legged animal—most often wolves, bears, or coyotes. However, you can tell them apart from normal animals or humans based on their strange, often elongated bodies, red eyes, and emaciated appearance.

Section 1 of 12:

What do skinwalkers look like?

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Skinwalkers are witches who can appear as any four-legged animal. According to Navajo legend, skinwalkers are witches who can assume the shape of any four-legged animal, although they’re most often associated with coyotes, foxes, bears, owls, and wolves. When not in their animal form, skinwalkers are typically depicted as an old man or woman, although this can differ from sighting to sighting. So how can you tell the difference between a skinwalker and a regular man, woman, or animal? Here are some distinguishing characteristics:^{[1]
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- The animal forms are often a little “off.” A skinwalker’s animal form may have rear knees that point the wrong way, eyes that are a little bit too big, or teeth that are longer and pointier than they should be.
- The eyes aren’t human. The eyes of a skinwalker are often lifeless, red, or on fire.^{[2]
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- Skinwalkers often appear emaciated. Most skinwalker sightings describe the creatures as thin, starving, and losing fur or hair in patches.^{[3]
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  - If you do see an emaciated animal with missing fur, don’t get close. They could be a rabid or sick animal, which could be more dangerous than a skinwalker.
- Skinwalkers can be male or female. It should be noted that in Navajo culture, “witch” is not a gendered term. Men and women can both be witches, so skinwalkers aren’t restricted to one gender.^{[4]
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Section 2 of 12:

What do skinwalker eyes look like?

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The skinwalker’s eyes are one of their most disturbing features. Most accounts of the creatures describe the eyes as being fiery in one way or another. Some skinwalkers may just have red eyes, while others may have eyes that literally shine and move like there’s a fire raging inside the pupils.^{[5]
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Section 3 of 12:

What do skinwalkers do?

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Skinwalkers engage in magic and seek to hide their true selves. The motives and goals of skinwalkers are mysterious at best—if people get close enough to see what they’re up to, they often don’t come home. Since skinwalkers are believed to be witches, they likely just want to focus on their craft. Beyond that, avoiding humans and staying fed seem to be their primary goals.^{[6]
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- There’s a Navajo saying, “A skinwalker is a witch who is afraid to die.”^{[7]
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  Research source} Skinwalkers place survival above all else. They’re not dangerous to people because they actually want to harm us—they just don’t want to risk letting someone see them and escaping to tell others.
- Skinwalkers are highly malevolent. While skinwalkers do normally seek to avoid people, they will go out of their way to attack or kill if they’re in the mood for it.
- Skinwalkers are created when witches commit a serious evil. If a witch murders someone, steals someone’s land, or commits some other kind of egregious act, they can become skinwalkers.
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Skinwalkers attempt to control the people they encounter. If you lock eyes with a skinwalker or you allow them to enter your mental energy, it’s said that they’re able to warp the minds of people or cause them to hallucinate. At higher levels, skinwalkers can outright control the bodies of the humans they encounter, which allows them to do all kinds of nefarious things.^{[8]
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- Skinwalkers can also attack whole communities. Especially powerful skinwalkers have been seen spreading plague and disease, killing livestock, and causing all kinds of interpersonal problems among communities.^{[9]
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Section 4 of 12:

What do skinwalkers not like?

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Skinwalkers are almost never seen during daylight. It’s unclear if they’re allergic to sunlight or if they merely prefer the cover of darkness so that they can’t be detected, but they do not seem to enjoy bright lights or the sun.^{[10]
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Skinwalkers are the spirits of witches who practice the dark arts, so they don’t tend to be very fond of purity, goodness, or kindness. These are malicious creatures.^{[11]
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White ash is said to be one of the few materials that hurts skinwalkers. Navajo legends tell of brave warriors who would coat their weapons in white ash to fight skinwalkers, and white ash on the ground is said to create boundaries the skinwalker cannot cross.^{[12]
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Above all else, the skinwalker seeks privacy. While they may not attack when they’re in an animal form, they are known to be very violent if someone observes their true state^{[13]
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Section 5 of 12:

What do skinwalkers eat?

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Information regarding skinwalker diets is sparse, but from what we can tell, their diets aren’t especially crazy. They either eat normal food you’d consume as a person, or they feed off the magic and energy they create.^{[14]
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Research source} While they certainly will hurt people, they do not appear to eat human flesh.

Section 6 of 12:

Where do skinwalkers live?

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Skinwalkers are native to the American Southwest. The Navajo Nation (historically, not currently) spans Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico, and that’s where the skinwalkers have been found. While they may wander a little bit outside of that traditional range, skinwalkers have not been observed much further away than that.^{[15]
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Section 7 of 12:

How do you kill a skinwalker?

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You must find their original body, kill it, and bury it. Killing a skinwalker is no easy feat. Not only do you have to find them in their original form, you also have to kill them. This is a challenge because skinwalkers are supernaturally strong and fast. If you do happen to kill it, you must bury the body or risk it returning and finding you.^{[16]
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- White ash may help kill a skinwalker. According to popular Navajo lore, white ash affects skinwalkers the way garlic affects vampires and silver affects werewolves. Coating a weapon in white ash or using white ash bullets may be required to take a skinwalker down.

Section 8 of 12:

Are skinwalkers real?

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There’s no evidence one way or another that skinwalkers are real. This remains a contentious subject of debate. While skinwalkers have never been documented on camera, many eyewitness testimonies exist. Skinwalkers ultimately fall into the same category as Mothman, Sasquatch, and the chupacabra—despite the numerous legends and eyewitnesses, they haven’t been confirmed to be real.
- In theory, skinwalkers should be especially hard to prove as real. Skinwalkers have two forms: a true human form and a false animal form. However, humans and animals are mundane enough that we don’t blink twice when we see one! In other words, if skinwalkers are real, it’d be really hard to prove it.

Section 9 of 12:

Reported Skinwalker Sightings

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Some people have reported “real” skinwalker sightings in recent years. Most famously, the owners of “Skinwalker Ranch,” a large rural property in northeastern Utah, have become an alleged hotbed for paranormal behavior—including that of Skinwalkers. The former owners, Terry and Gwen Sherman, reported a “systematic and repeated mutilation of their cattle,” as well as the sighting of a “large humanoid creature spying” on a visiting research team.^{[17]
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Research source} Here are some other notable skinwalker sightings shared online, via Reddit:
- Reddit user u/The Darkness Diaries posted a story of a skinwalker encounter near a Navajo reservation in Arizona, claiming to have seen a man-like figure standing on a ridge with elongated limbs, glowing yellow eyes, mottled gray skin, and the face of their travel companion.^{[18]
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- Reddit user u/jturley85 shared a video of a “possible skinwalker sighting in Beaver, Utah, claiming that their wife’s coworker was hunting with a pack of dogs when two ran off. The dogs were found “ripped apart,” which is when they noticed a far-off, “extremely long and skinny creature” and “recorded in their scope.”^{[19]
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Section 10 of 12:

Wendigo vs. Skinwalker

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Wendigos are made by greed, while skinwalkers commit evil acts. According to legend, wendigos are created when greed corrupts and weakens a person’s soul. This allows an evil spirit to enter their soul and warp them into a wendigo. Skinwalkers, on the other hand, are just human witches who gain powers using evil, selfish magic.^{[20]
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- They come from different regions, too. The legend of the wendigo was popular among the Algonquin-speaking tribes of North America in the Eastern United States, while skinwalkers were relatively exclusive to the Navajo peoples in the Southwestern US.
The wendigo is a voracious predator. It wants nothing more than to feast on the skin of a person. Skinwalkers, on the other hand, mainly want to stay away from people. They will harm humans if they encounter them, but it’s not a goal of theirs.^{[21]
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Skinwalkers are just humans with special powers, but wendigos are supernatural beings. The wendigo’s shell may have been human at one point, but its humanity is basically long gone. Skinwalkers are still “real” people.^{[22]
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Section 11 of 12:

Are there Skinwalker deer?

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Not Deer is a creature often confused for skinwalkers. The Not Deer is a kind of Appalachian creature that resembles a deer closely, except its back knees bend backwards and its eyes are in the front of its head (implying it’s a predator). The Not Deer is considered a dangerous creature, but it doesn’t appear to shapeshift into anything.^{[23]
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Section 12 of 12:

Are there Appalachian skinwalkers?

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Wendigos are often confused for skinwalkers because they’re both four-legged creatures with abnormal speed and crazy-looking eyes. However, they’re completely different creatures. That said, wendigos are native to the Appalachians, so if you encounter a four-legged creature with red eyes in the Appalachian woods, you’re dealing with a wendigo.^{[24]
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“Skinwalker” could refer to a few different legends, characters, and cryptids. We only covered Navajo skinwalkers (specifically, “Yenaldooshi”) since they’re easily the most popular and common.

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