Two sisters camping in Joshua Tree. One of them whistles into the dark without thinking. That night, something walks the perimeter of their camp — bipedal, unseen, and it knows their friend's voice well enough to use it. Tonight's guest didn't read about any of this in a book. He grew up on the Navajo Nation, where what the rest of the world calls legend he calls home. Don Yazzy is a Navajo researcher, experiencer, and host of the Don't Whistle at Night Podcast, broadcasting live every Saturday on United Public Radio Network and available on YouTube and Spotify. He returns to the Codex with new field investigations, fresh encounters, and lore that goes far deeper than any documentary has touched. What You'll Learn:
Why whistling at night is forbidden across many Native tribes — and exactly what it attracts
How Sasquatch uses whistling to coordinate hunts between three individuals in the dark
The role of the Navajo Trickster figure — father of Sasquatch, Dogman, skinwalkers, and all children of the night
Why skinwalkers send owls as a warning before they escalate to a spirit arrow through the heart
How arrowheads are prayed over and activated as tools against witchcraft and dark entities
What the Pueblo tribes use spiders and snakes for — and how to identify their surveillance symbols
The Mayan and Aztec death whistle and why Don uses it as a conduit in field investigations
The Navajo shoe game and how it connects the creation story of day versus night
Five types of Navajo healers and how each one removes what gets inside a person
What bitter powder does to a skinwalker spy in the astral realm — captured on film
Stories Discussed:
Don recounts a live investigation at a skinwalker cave in Gallup, New Mexico where a hand trembler who had predicted she would be possessed that night was — and had to be held down, was biting team members, and finally expelled whatever entered her after being hit with bitter powder.
He describes his first Sasquatch encounter at 18, walking 90 yards alone toward something screaming on a red dirt hill at midnight — until he was 10 yards away and locked eyes with a 12-foot creature whose arm span cast a shadow wider than its body.
He walks through the night his young cousin came sprinting back around a mesa corner shaking and barely able to speak — having come face to face with something running toward him on all fours, reaching out its hands, before it disappeared up a near-vertical rock face.
He shares the Goatman encounter on the mesa: approaching what he thought was his cousin hunched over a lost goat, until its neck began to grow, a second head emerged, and two voices from two mouths began to speak in unison like an old woman and a young girl singing at the same time.
He details a night near a cave in Farmington where a trail cam had captured something that looked like Pennywise, an owl was sent as a warning, and then a rifle shot passed between his head and Darren's before they hit the ground and waited 30 minutes in a wash to see if another came.
Memorable Quote: "When you whistle, it's just the same thing as turning on the strobe lights — all the bugs are coming in to see you, and probably try to enter inside of you."
Disclaimer: Neither The Host (Rye Voss) nor the podcast (Codega's Codex of Curiosities) are responsible for the views and opinions of any of the guests. * All claims made by individual guests are at their own discretion and may not reflect on the overall views of Codega's Codex of Curiosities or Rye Voss
