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Paranormal Yakker

Interview on paranormal subject

Paranormal Yakker

Shapeshifters Stalking North America

December 03, 2024 • Stan Mallow

Award-winning author and paranormal investigator Pamela A. Kinney joins us to unravel the mysteries and legends of North American shapeshifters. From the eerie skinwalkers and owl witches of the American Southwest to the elusive Kushtaka of the Northwest, Pamela captivates us with tales that have been passed down through generations. As we journey through the icy realms of Alaska to the sunny regions of Florida and the mysterious Midwest, listeners will be enchanted by stories of dogmen and mythical creatures like the Beast of Bray Road. With her unique blend of storytelling and investigative prowess, Pamela offers a vivid tapestry of shapeshifter mythology that is as haunting as it is fascinating.

Pamela also takes us behind the scenes of her writing process, sharing insights into her passion for the paranormal and how it fuels her creative endeavors. Discover her journey from penning stories about the witch folklore of Virginia to publishing her comprehensive guide on shapeshifters across North America. Engage with her work through popular platforms like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and connect with her on social media or at a book signing. This episode is bound to ignite the imagination of anyone drawn to the mysterious world of werewolves and other mythical beings, offering a rich source of inspiration for both readers and fellow writers alike.

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Hi everyone, I'm Stan Mallow,welcome to Paranormal Yakker.My guest in today's show isPamela K Kinney, a trulyoutstanding lady who wears manyhats and she wears them quite well.She's an award-winning author,actress, master costumer,casting director, andparanormal investigator.I'll be talking withPamela about her book, Werewolves,Dogmen, and Other ShapeshiftersStalking North America.Pamela K Kinney,welcome to Paranormal Yakker.Thank you for having me today. Your book exploresthe North American tales and mythology thatdeal with shapeshifters.I'm going to mention some of theareas you cover and then ask you totell me a shapeshifter storyassociated with that area.What shapeshifter story can you tell methat comes from the desertsof the American southwest?Well, number one, skinwalkers of coursewith the Navajo and the Hopi,especially the Navajo. It's apretty big thing. They had to be inthere because they do shapeshift form. Everything that's inmy book actually shapeshifts. Ithas to do it in order to be in it.I mean, actually, I can tell you astory. A girl came up to me at asigning and says,Is Mothman in my book? And I juststarted laughing. I said, I hateto tell you this. Mothmanlooks exactly like that. Does notchange shape, doesn't do anythingelse. No, Mothman's not inmy book. When you have things, ithas to be able to change shape, orat least you assume. Like,I have 2 separate sections in thebeginning book if you notice, iswerewolves, which isshapeshifter, and then dogmen. Butdogmen look pretty well like whatwe think is a werewolf,it will be seen. That's why it's inthere. And a lot of that's ofcourse where people's encounterswith them. There's been a lot of that.But yeah, skinwalkers, dogmenor werewolves can be down inthat area too. That's a differentwhole different thing. Skinwalkerstake many shapes. People thinkwerewolves when they hear that, butit's not. It's not just wolves,coyotes, birds, even people atsome point. So they change shape.There are actually evil witchestoo, which is a wholedifferent little thing about that.And there's also another one, owlwitches, which is down there,more of a connection between notjust the Native American, butMexico and that. A lot of Hispanic,where a woman changes into the owl.And they actually are evil witchestoo, in order to dothat. Because some of all of thedifferent ones that they have haveeither eat people or killpeople or stuff like that. Both ofthem are witches of theparticular area.What aboutshapeshifters in the dense forestsof the American Northwest?Oh, my favorite, the Kitchika. Thatmeans ottermen. They are certaincouple of tribes that they believein it. They believe men,obviously, because that's why theterm ottermen, we don't hear aboutwomen. It's boys and men. Andactually they use them almost likea boogie man, telling boys why theyshouldn't wander off and gointo the woods without parents oranybody knowing about it. Just likewe would warn our kids not togo out there as a bad person. Itmight grab you in that. And if theydo, then the ottermen or oneof them would come. They're like8 foot land otters, is whatthey're called. And they grab thetake the boy into them and theyleave them with them for a longwhile until they start changingthemselves. Doesn't sound like thatthey have to bite them or do any ofthe stuff that we wouldthink of just to have to be withthem. And they start changing intoa land otter themselves. So.Alaska, the largest US state byarea has itsshapeshifter story too. What is it?Okay, it has not just the Kushtaka.That is the Northwest up north. I'msorry, I've got thedifferent area, but it also has theEskimos, which they believe indifferent shapeshifters.The Nagual actually is one andthere is one of the birds. And thefunny thing about the birds,I thought was interesting is whenthey change themselves to be ableto speak, they actuallycan move their beaks up, which is adifferent way of, Iguess, to look like more human,be able to speak. Then to make beakdown, it's a bird again. And alsoseals, which is interesting,because that's another thing, likein Ireland and places out there,they have to have a skin theyuse to wear it and they become aseal. They actually have thatEskimos too. And also dogmenor werewolves are seen there too.That's whole different,lots of stories. I mean,Florida is known for its sunnybeaches and amusement parks. And nowthanks to you, Pamela,we have to include shapeshifters.What is your shapeshifterstory for Florida?Dogmen are actually dogmen areeverywhere in the United States.Also, owl witches,there's a different types of theSikini and another kind out there.They are the same thing.Evil witches, it can take form ofan owl, which is actually humansize by some of it,have done that fighting off withother tribes and stuff like that.It's basically the same thing,witches. Owl witches are inHispanics out west, out where theskinwalkers are. And then it hadsome couple of different ones herein Florida in that area.When one thinks of the AmericanMidwest, often referred to asAmerica's Heartland, what generallycomes to mind is its industryfarming and down to earth friendlypeople, not shapeshifters.You say otherwise. What,Pamela, is your Midwestshapeshifter story?Well, the famous onethat everybody's heard of,the Beast of Bray Road inWisconsin, it has a lot of dogmenor werewolf stories. And actually,Linda Bray actually called itwerewolf at first until I guess,finding out above. In Michigan,they have what they call thedogmen. And I found out the reasonthey call them dogmen at the timeis investigators for that believebecause dogs have shorter snoutsthen wolves, which is wrongbecause I had a Siberian Huskysame. And if you see the picture inthere of the Timberwolf,which is in a zoo out here, it'sthe same length and same size as mydog was my Siberian. He waspretty big for a sib, but he hadthe same long snout. I don't knowif they were thinking of maybebulldogs. And now that we haveproven science has said that theyare really wolves descended from2 different ones, that probablythrows that out. I say I'msometimes calling them to myself,wolfmen, which is more cooler, Ithink werewolves and dogmen. Yeah,they have a lot of that outthere and stuff seen a lot. AndWendigo, Wendigo is another one. Itdoes change your shape becauseit makes you become a cannibalhumans. Normally looks you wouldsee I have a couple 3 storiesin there where it's actual NativeAmerican mythology. It has hornslike of a deer anda tall and thin and very like it'sstarving. And both legs, I guess ifit takes over a human being,it changes them too. So that way,that's why you hear all thecannibal stories out there a lotconnected with wintertime, which iswhat it was about the warningpeople about wintertime andhow you could get starving and eatyour own relatives.The Appalachian Mountains have hadtheir share of shapeshifter sightings.Can you, Pamela, give mean example of one or 2 of thosesightings? There's one hereactually, I can tell you definitelyoff the bat because I wrote aboutit to begin with here in Virginia.One of them is was from the 1800sand it was the big stone gapwhere they seen a wolf, a whitewolf. That was always looked like awolf, but when they shot atit, they found nothing but a littlebit of blood and it was mostlydead. They tested it, it wasn'tquite, it was pretty well not thereafter that. But the famous one, andI coined the term firstbecause I seen it in Linda Bray'sbook later on when I was trying toget more stuff in 2020 towrite this book, which was hard yetto get everything from Amazon orsomewhere delivered,is the werewolf of Henrico. There'sa forum on the websitefound out on the internet.People actually have sightings outin a couple of places in HenricoCounty, which is west of us.It's in Richmond area like we areand people have seen something likea long white type wolf doglike things. That's what's beencursing a lot and it's, there'sstill even now new storieshappenings and stuff. The other onethat did make it in this book andI'm trying to get my one ghostbook that was not by Schiffer, gobe through one of my small presspublisher, she's going to do itand I'll have to have her, she'sgoing to add it in too, is thedismal swamp on the 1800s, whichactually walked in its hind legsand people saw it and it's the samethings that we would thinkof dogmen things, but they calledit werewolf because 1800 dogmenwasn't a term that they knewof that distinct werewolf.There's just this swamp area,which it wouldbe a lot of the homes around there,but there is a big giant swampbetween southeast Virginia andNorth Carolina. So it would bemaybe even in their seen at thatpoint, So.Your stories Pamela havebeen thoroughly andmeticulously researched. Did yourresearch find similarities inshapeshifter stories from onearea to the other orwhere they differences?Oh, I caught one for along time. If you talkabout skinwalkers, there's a web, Iactually first years ago found ablog about it. They don't liketo think about it. They don't wantto talk about it, they worry, becauseit might bring it to them.So they want to keep skinwalkersaway. They're evil. Well, theinteresting thing is I kind offound out there are 3 othertribes, one for the Wendigo, samething. Don't want to think aboutit. Don't want to talk about it. Itmight come after you. There's alittle one out in the southwestmore Washington. It was a smalllittle creature, same thing. Andthen there's the Kuchtika,which is in Alaska. And they havethe same thing. They don't want tothink about it. They don't wantto talk about it. It will comeafter them. I'm pretty wellthinking it all started with,came with it when they came overthe land bridge, whoever thenatives came overthousands of yearsago, settled first with Alaska.That's where it probably started.The skinwalkers, you hear moreabout it, probably. That's probablyan older spot because they all camefrom that way to come downto the different parts of theUnited States. I caught that. Idon't know if anybody's everdone it before, but I thought, ohmy gosh, they're actually the same thing.You, Pamela,are a prolific writer and haveauthored books that range fromhorror, science fiction, fantasy,poetry, and even the apocalypse.Where do you get your creativejuices from and whydo certain topics spark yourinterest to write aboutmore than other topics?I read that stuff I've done sinceI was young. Fiction's easy. Thisstuff inspires me anyway.Same thing with my ghost books.There's stuff in there to inspireanybody to want to writesomething. And I've had writers buymy ghost books and I get them atsignings, sending themwith the dogmen. Everybody wants toget it, in fact, Werewolf, Dogmen andShapeshifter One is writtento begin with with writers in mindbecause you sit there and see a lotof the stuff that comes fromgaming. And I thought, well,where's the old legends that's beenout there? All the old story.So I started looking for all thatup to put out. Maybe people canrealize it's not just about gamingstuff like White Wolf and that.There's the old stuff andthey're all differently interestingeven around the world. If itinspires a writer to writesomething different about thewerewolf, but it's been always beenout there, they can look throughmy book. Same thing for readers,obviously. They like the books.Everybody likes werewolves. It'sactually outbeaten my ghost booksand my fiction at this point. It'sgot at least on Amazon,you can tell it's everywhere forsale. I've gotten a lot of reviewsgoing up there really quick,more than any others. People reallyare interested in this subject. Andof course, it helps mebecause my one ghost book hauntedVirginia. I have the Bunny Man.It's a Bunny Man bridge up here inVirginia. It's a legend of a man ina white bunny suit carrying ahatchet. And it's supposed to startin 1900s, but a librarian actuallyresearched it to see if that'strue. He grew up in an arealike every other teenager's atHalloween. You got to go there andsee if you can catch theBunny Man without being caught.Where he found it probably startedmore in the 1970s. That means,in other words, somebody had afuture as a horror writer,obviously, to getall this stuff. Itinspired me to write a story. Andit actually got published. It cameout in an anthology this endof October. It inspires me at someof this stuff, and it helps me withthat. And I just like towrite. I wrote a book that justcame out last October at 395 pages,how I did that. And ina mythical town in Virginia,settled by witches. Why not? Ittalks about witches a lot out inwestern Virginia. And all that. Addall the stuff that youknow that you're learning.Should viewers of Paranormal Yakkerwanted buy Werewolves, Dogmen, andOther ShapeshiftersStalking North America, as well aslearn about the other books youauthored, how, Pamela,can they do that? They can check mywebsite, and that'sPamelaKKinney.com.Also, I'm on Facebook. I'mInstagram. Also, they can go there.Of course, Amazonhas a, everybody has a,once you got a published book upthere, you got a site for that.They can go check through there.Werewolves Dogmen are atBarnes and Noble.com.They're at Books a Million.They're at Bookshop.org,which is supporting your localindependent bookstores. When everytime they sell it up there,money goes to the local independentbookstore of your area. It's a lotof places you can find it.Or they, if they're in my area, andI'm, and they look up my website,and they see I'm in a,going to be at a convention or booksigning somewhere near them, theycan come, just comethere and get it. It's what I'msigning that day.Pamela K Kinney I thank you for being my gueston Paranormal Yakker. Yakking withyou has been an enjoyableexperience. The best of luck to youwith your writing.Thank you.I'm working on that ghost book tofinish, and then I got asequal to that new novel.