THE PARANORMAL RANGER

A former Navajo Ranger turned paranormal investigator reflects on personal and professional encounters with the supernatural.

The son of a Navajo educator and his Cherokee Irish wife, Milford grew up with a deep connection to Native American culture. His attachment to Navajo culture deepened after his parents’ divorce, especially during the summers he spent at his father’s house learning about—and encountering—Navajo spirit entities like skinwalkers. As an adult, Milford trained to become a Navajo Ranger, a job that required a “holistic” blend of policing skills and intuition to bring “the individuals I encountered into balance with their surroundings and community.” His open-minded approach became especially important when working cases involving dead sheep that had been slit from throat to groin and drained of all their blood and sightings of flying objects that moved at “otherworldly speed.” Milford’s willingness to treat all incidents—and the people who reported them—with respect earned him the distinction of investigating all Navajoland reports of Bigfoot sightings, ghosts, and extraterrestrials. As he recounts his experiences, Milford interweaves colorful stories from Navajo mythology that illuminate cultural beliefs about the origins of life, monsters, and the spirit world. For him no distinction exists between the supernatural and reality. “Paranormal hotspots”—including places like Gettysburg, where 51,000 Confederate and Union soldiers died during the Civil War—are simply spaces charged with human negativity while Navajo stories about “terrifying monsters” are records of the “tormented places [created] through our division and strife.”

Engaging reading for adventurous minds.