From UFO sightings to Big Foot — inside the eeriest National Park in America: ‘Like the X-Files’

When Navajo Ranger Stanley Milford Jr and partner Jon Dover were assigned to the department for investigating paranormal activity in Arizona and Utah’s Monument Valley, the pair couldn’t believe it. “Oh my goodness, we’re going to be like The X-Files,” said Dover.

But as Milford reveals in ‘The Paranormal Ranger – A Navajo Investigator’s Search for the Unexplained’ (William Morrow), Dover’s hunch was accurate. “I never ex­pected to go looking for ghosts, Bigfoot, UFOs, extra-terrestrials, or Navajo witches,” he writes.

“[But] the cases led me to one conclusion: There’s much more to this world than we can imagine.” 

The son of a Navajo father and Cherokee mother, Milford’s 11-year stint investigating paranormal activ­ity within Navajo reservations defined his career.

From UFO sightings in Arizona to Big Foot encounters in New Mexico’s Chuska Mountains, Milford treated each case with equal seriousness. “For those who experienced paranormal encounters, the event could be traumatizing,” he writes. “I learned to shut my mouth and open my ears.”

Some investigations followed him home. In November 2010, Milford visited offices in Window Rock, Arizona. “The employees heard disembodied voices, felt un­seen hands touch them,” he writes.