Italian Observer Asks Why Every Creature Is Now a 'Skinwalker'

ITALY — A Reddit user posting to r/Paranormal has raised a question of vocabulary: how did the word "Skinwalker" come to describe nearly every strange creature in American folklore? The author, who says they live in Italy and are therefore about as far from Navajo reservations as one can get, writes that they looked up the term's meaning in Navajo tradition out of simple curiosity.

What puzzles the author is that people living far closer to those regions, some reportedly beside the reservations themselves, apply the word freely. According to the post, a sighting of a crawler draws the answer that it is a skinwalker, and so does talk of a mimic. The author adds that the word is also used to muddle Wendigo legends.

The writer's central contention is that a Skinwalker is neither a cryptid nor a "monster", and that the loose usage therefore misses the mark. The post does not elaborate on the tradition itself, and no sources are cited.

The author floats a few possible causes. Is social media to blame, the post asks, with TikTok singled out? Or is it a passing trend, perhaps following a boom in Appalachian stories? No answers are offered, and the author closes by asking why people do not look up a word before using it, adding that the question comes from sheer curiosity.

The post's replies were not included in the material reviewed, and the matter of the term's drift remains, for now, an open question on the board.