In Navajo lore, there's one creature so terrifying that the Navajo themselves rarely dare to even utter its name. That creature is the skinwalker, also called yee naaldlooshii, or ‘with it, he goes on all fours,' and it’s perhaps the most bone-chilling monster in the entirety of Native American mythology. 

However, the skinwalkers actually aren’t monsters at all — they're people, often former healers or medicine men who have crossed over into darkness. Able to transform into animals and wear their skins, skinwalkers are said to be pure evil, capable of spreading disease, disaster, and death. 

But what’s scariest about these supernatural creatures is that they’re not merely confined to legend. Many witnesses have claimed to see skinwalkers and their glowing red eyes in real life. There's even a hotbed of activity in Utah called Skinwalker Ranch, where some have reported unsettling encounters in the depth of night…

This is the legend of the skinwalker, the elusive, violent creature that the Navajo won’t even mention — lest they conjure it straight to their door. 

https://allthatsinteresting.com/skinwalker

credits: https://allthatsinteresting.com/podcast-credits

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In June 1969, Dennis Lloyd Martin walked off to play a prank on his dad and never returned, sparking the largest search effort in the history of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

https://allthatsinteresting.com/dennis-martin

credits: https://allthatsinteresting.com/podcast-credits

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michael and Kristine Barnett of Indiana claim that their adopted daughter Natalia Grace is really a psychotic adult dwarf who tried to kill them — but where does the truth lie?

https://allthatsinteresting.com/natalia-barnett

credits: https://allthatsinteresting.com/podcast-credits

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Feral Child" Genie Wiley was strapped to a chair by her parents and neglected for 13 years, giving researchers a rare chance to study human development.

The story of Genie Wiley the Feral Child sounds like the stuff of fairytales: An unwanted, mistreated child survives brutal imprisonment at the hands of a savage ogre and is rediscovered and reintroduced to the world in an impossibly youthful state. Unfortunately for Wiley, hers is a dark, real-life tale with no happy ending. There would be no fairy godmothers, no magic solutions, and no enchanted transformations.

https://allthatsinteresting.com/genie-wiley-feral-child

credits: https://allthatsinteresting.com/podcast-credits

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On a Saturday in February in 1867, a group of hunters in the Bulandshahr district of India came across a shocking sight. After they tracked a lone wolf to a cave in the jungle, they peered inside and saw the last thing they’d ever expect to find: a six-year-old human boy, alive and well, living with the wolves. 

Though Sanichar led a strange and short life, forever trapped at the dividing line between human society and the animal kingdom, his legacy lives on. In fact, he's allegedly the inspiration for Mowgli in Rudyard Kipling's novel The Jungle Book, which was later adapted into a beloved Disney film. 

But the true story of Dina Sanichar is nowhere near as innocent, charming, or joyful as the Disney version might have us believe. 

https://allthatsinteresting.com/dina-sanichar

credits: https://allthatsinteresting.com/podcast-credits

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the summer of 2021, Indigenous people across Canada started visiting the sites of former Indian Residential Schools. With ground-penetrating radar devices in hand, they slowly swept the earth, hoping, with heavy hearts, to confirm a long-held rumor about the untold numbers of Indigenous children who had vanished while enrolled in these facilities. 

Although these recent discoveries in Canada have forced a political reckoning there, the United States is only just beginning to grapple with its own history of Indian Boarding Schools. Starting in the 19th century, the US opened hundreds of schools with the explicit mission... to "Kill the Indian, Save the Man." 

https://allthatsinteresting.com/residential-schools-in-canada

podcast credits: https://allthatsinteresting.com/podcast-credits

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1995, Disney released Pocahontas, a film about a doomed whirlwind romance between a Native American woman, Pocahontas, and an English colonist, John Smith. But although both Pocahontas and John Smith were real people, the film takes some definite liberties with the facts of Pocahontas's life. 

Though she is best known as a Disney character today, the real-life story of Pocahontas is even more captivating than what appeared in the film. 

https://allthatsinteresting.com/pocahontas-myths-documentary

https://allthatsinteresting.com/podcast-credits

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Between 1764 and 1767, something evil stalked the quiet hills of Gévaudan, France. The so-called Bête du Gévaudan, or Beast of Gévaudan, attacked hundreds of people, often tearing out their throats. No one knew what it was — or how to stop it.

https://allthatsinteresting.com/beast-of-gevaudan podcast credits: https://allthatsinteresting.com/podcast-credits

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Dec. 1, 1948, beachgoers came across a dead man on Australia’s Somerton beach. Well-dressed, and with no signs of trauma, his identity and cause of death eluded local police. Soon, investigators dubbed him the “Somerton Man.”

It looked as though he’d simply laid down for a rest and died peacefully in his sleep. But when police arrived and began examining the body, a baffling and disturbing mystery began to take shape. 

The man had no obvious signs of trauma; someone had cut all the tags out of his clothing, and, most puzzling of all, he had a tiny slip of paper sewn into a hidden pocket in his trousers, which simply read "Tamam Shud.” The phrase, mystifying to investigators at first, is Persian for "it is finished” and the slip of paper was torn from a rare edition of poems by the 12th-century writer Omar Khayyam.

https://allthatsinteresting.com/tamam-shud-somerton-man

https://allthatsinteresting.com/podcast-credits

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On the morning of February 4, 1912, a man named Franz Reichelt stepped out onto the edge of the Eiffel Tower. He paused there for about 40 seconds as if he was gathering his courage. Then, he threw himself into the air. 

He didn't intend to die — this wasn't an Eiffel Tower suicide attempt. Instead, Franz Reichelt had set out to prove that his prized invention, a bizarre parachute suit, could deliver him safely to the ground. 

https://allthatsinteresting.com/franz-reichelt

credits: https://allthatsinteresting.com/podcast-credits

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices