Unsolved Mysteries Wiki
Don't have an account?
Register
Advertisement
Register
Unsolved Mysteries Wiki
Unsolved Mysteries Wiki
1,937
pages
in: Investigators, Netflix

Stan Milford and Jon Dover

Edit
Stan Milford Jon Dover

Stan Milford and Jon Dover

Real Names: Stanley Milford Jr. and Jonathan Redbird Dover
Occupation: Navajo Ranger (Both)
Place Of Birth: Oklahoma (Stanley); Los Angeles, California (Jonathan)
Date Of Birth:
Location: Navajo Nation

History[]

Background: Stan Milford and Jon Dover are retired Navajo Rangers. Starting in 2000, they were assigned to investigate reports of paranormal activity on the Navajo reservation. Stan believes there is something magical about the reservation. It is 27,000 square miles – about the size of West Virginia. It is located mainly in northeast Arizona, northwest New Mexico, and southeast Utah. He says he has probably stood in places where no other man has stood, which is hard for him to take in and imagine. To him, it seems like the vast, remote areas go on forever.
The Navajo Rangers, formed in 1957, are separate from the Navajo Police, who provide the "public safety" aspect of the Navajo communities. The Navajo Rangers provide enforcement and protection over the natural resources of the Navajo Nation. Their jobs involve working in forest fire areas, conducting evacuations, and conducting search and rescue operations. According to Stan, they are modeled after the National Park Service Rangers.
Navajo Rangers are trained at the federal law enforcement training center and are recognized by the federal government as federal officers. Jon also completed criminal investigation training at the training center. When Stan looks back on wanting to become a Navajo Ranger, he remembers that it was an exclusive club. They had a “presence” about them, and he wanted to be a part of that. He and Jon met around 1989. After that, they started working together quite often. They were co-SWAT team commanders for backcountry operations. They got to know each other well and became close friends. They even adopted each other as brothers.
In 2000, Stan and Jon's chief ranger called the other rangers in for a meeting. A complaint had been lodged against the department for failing to investigate a Bigfoot case. Jon says that in the United States, there is no mechanism to investigate paranormal cases. Since it is not built into their investigative systems, these cases are ignored. However, he says there are people out there who are absolutely terrified by their experiences and need help.
The chief ranger told the group that they were going to start investigating the paranormal cases. He then told Stan and Jon that they would be handling the “major” cases. Stan thinks that certain rangers would not go near these cases because, within the Navajo culture, it is taboo to deal with, approach, or even talk about them. The reason he and Jon were chosen was that they grew up in “both worlds.”
Stan was born and raised in Oklahoma, and Jon was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. They are part Navajo, but they did not hold onto the traditional beliefs that a lot of the Navajos held about being around the paranormal. The chief ranger felt that the two were uniquely equipped to lead objective, forensics-based investigations into paranormal events while remaining respectful of ancient Navajo traditions and taboos. Jon's immediate thought was that they were going to be like “The X-Files.”
When Stan and Jon investigated paranormal cases, they treated it like a criminal investigation. They interviewed witnesses and looked for evidence. They determined the credibility of the witnesses and figured out if the evidence lined up with their testimony.
One of Stan and Jon's first cases was in Upper Fruitland, a farming community along the San Juan River (which goes through southern Utah and northern New Mexico). Over thirty people reported seeing a Bigfoot-type creature along the riverbank. The local police dismissed the sightings, but Stan and Jon took them seriously. They interviewed several witnesses. One woman said she was driving down the highway when she thought she saw a person hitchhiking. But as she got closer, she realized it was not a person. It was a tall “thing” with hair all over it. She did not see any facial features.
Another woman said that her grandson had seen a Bigfoot. He described it as big and tall. She said she did not want to go to the area where the sighting occurred by herself. According to Jon, some of the witnesses were terrified and did not know what they had experienced. They saw something completely out of the ordinary and wanted answers.
Jon says they have had reports of a Bigfoot stepping over corrals, taking sheep, stepping back over, and walking off with them. He and Stan have seen sheep killed by having the wool ripped off their backs. He says it was like someone had grabbed the sheep around the neck and tore its wool off. They also had a report of a Bigfoot punching the wall of a trailer. The marks were still on the trailer when they went to it.
In interviewing people up and down the river, Stan and Jon got the feeling that these occurrences had been going on for some time. Stan says the Bigfoots are often described as being hairy, much taller than a man (seven or eight feet tall), very muscular, built “like a tank”, with wide shoulders and canine teeth. They smell like wet dogs. Their hair has been described as brown, red, and/or with streaks.
During their investigation, Stan and Jon interviewed Brenda Harris, who lived in a mobile home along the San Juan River. She and her family had encountered a Bigfoot at their home one summer night. That night, she left all the bedroom and living room windows open. At 10:30pm, her husband left to work the graveyard shift.
About thirty minutes later, Brenda heard something heavy walking onto the porch. Moments later, she and her children saw the doorknob turn. She unlatched the lock. Once that clicked, she could hear whatever was outside let go of the doorknob. She says she was really scared.
Brenda swung the door open and saw a creature standing in front of her. She said to herself, “That can't be what I think it is. That's huge.” It was black, tall, and covered in hair. She says it was not very muscular; it was kind of scraggy-looking. She could not believe what she was seeing. Suddenly, the creature closed the door, darted off the porch, and ran to the west.
According to Brenda, about fifteen minutes later, the creature came back again. It did the same thing as before; it started turning the doorknob. As soon as she turned the bedroom light on, the creature ran off. She says that this went on throughout the whole night.
Finally, at daybreak, Brenda decided to walk around the house. On one of the windows, she noticed large handprints. Behind her daughter's bedroom, she found a footprint. It was eighteen inches long and four inches wide. Brenda says the creature could have torn the door open, but it did not. She wonders why it was trying to get inside her house.
After hearing Brenda's story, Jon took a team of six men up along the San Juan River. They discovered large footprints; one was twenty-one inches long with toes showing. According to the prints, the creature had a five-foot stride. Jon says that if a person tried to do a five-foot stride, they would be doing splits.
Jon and his team followed the prints to a barbed wire fence, which the creature stepped over. Caught in the barbed wire was a tuft of hair. Stan and Jon collected it as part of their investigation. The hairs were small, but they had the “tag ends” on them, which is what is needed for DNA examination. The DNA analysis should have told them what species or major group of species it belonged to. However, the report simply stated it was an “unknown carnivore.” There was no match for it in the DNA database. Jon says the database has animals from all over the world. He has no explanation for the DNA results.
Brenda decided to set up a camera behind her house. One night, the camera picked up a small black figure next to their pool. To her, it looked like a “juvenile Bigfoot.” She does not know if it crawled to the pool. But to her, it looked like the creature “boiled up” from the ground. It stood in a runner's stance and then took off to the west. Brenda also recorded strange sounds, possibly of the creature yelling or screaming.
Brenda soon learned that other people in the area had also seen or experienced a Bigfoot around their properties. Navajo Nation residents Vernida and Duane Bissonette claim that the creature tore off tin panels from their horse corral. Duane says he could not tear the panels off, but somehow the creature had torn them off like paper. The creature also broke some heavy steel fencing.
Brenda put up cameras around the Bissonettes' horse corral. In one of the pictures, the shadow of a tall figure is shown on the side of the corral. They have no idea what the figure is, and the experience has scared them. Brenda wants the people of the Navajo Nation to know what is out there and to be careful since they do not know what the creatures are capable of doing.
During one of Stan and Jon's investigations, they tracked a Bigfoot's footprints for miles. Then, all of a sudden, the footprints stopped, as if the creature had been “jerked into the sky.” Brenda says that a lot of people believe that Bigfoots have spiritual powers that allow them to disappear. People have told her that they have watched and followed a Bigfoot, only for it to disappear right in front of them.
Although neither Stan nor Jon have seen a Bigfoot, they did have an encounter during one investigation. Stan says that some rocks came flying through the pine trees and landed about fifteen feet away from him. They later determined that the rocks, which were about fifteen pounds, were being thrown from a slope about 300 yards away. They believe that a Bigfoot threw the rocks.
Jon says that whenever there was an increase in Bigfoot sightings, there was a corresponding increase in UFO sightings. A witness told Stan and Jon that they had seen a UFO beam light from an area off Highway 4. Another witness reported seeing a “cluster of red and green lights” that went up “like a flash.” The witness also described seeing a bluish ray coming from the object.
Two witnesses described seeing a string of white lights in the distance that appeared to be radiating from something. The lights lasted for about ten seconds. According to Jon, another sighting occurred nearby a few days earlier. He and Stan suspect that UFOs are coming to the area regularly. Most Navajo people have told them that it is “a normal thing.”
Another common paranormal phenomenon that Stan and Jon have investigated is orbs, which are balls of light. Orbs come in all different shapes, sizes, and colors. They operate at seemingly impossible speeds and angles. Jon himself experienced an orb sighting as a child when he was visiting his grandparents at their cabin.
One night in 1972, at 1am, Jon and his grandparents left in their car. He was sitting up front between them. As they were heading out, they saw a red light weaving back and forth through the trees and coming toward them. It was about shoulder-height and a bit smaller than a volleyball. To him, it seemed like it was internally lit. It was moving very steadily and calmly. They could not hear any sound coming from it.
The orb came from a wooded area and glided across a field towards Jon and his grandparents. It went right in front of them, then went up through some trees to the left of them. They could see it weaving back and forth through the trees as it went up the hillside. Jon says it was the most amazing thing he had ever seen.
Jon's grandfather grabbed a .30-.30 rifle and said he was going to shoot it. His grandmother started yelling and told him to leave it alone. She did not believe it was a UFO; she believed it was associated with witchcraft. Jon says Navajo witchcraft was known to be used in the area. He says the sighting was very strange and has stuck in his mind ever since.
Stan and Jon investigated an orb case involving a young woman who lived on the Navajo reservation in Leupp, Arizona, and worked in nearby Flagstaff. She has asked to remain anonymous because people have either thought she was crazy or did not believe her. She was born and raised on the reservation. She says there had been enough instances of strange lights being seen in the sky that it was a well-known phenomenon in the community.
At around 1:30am one night, the woman was driving home along an empty road surrounded by desert when she noticed a red ball of light off to her driver's side. It followed her for about a minute, never emitting any kind of sound. She reached a point where the road made a sharp curve, so she had to take her eyes off the ball. When she looked back to her left, she noticed that the ball had turned into a bright white ball of light.
The woman was afraid because the ball was very close to her. She did not know what to do. She realized that it was intelligent enough to follow her. It stayed beside her for about a quarter of a mile before it shot forward. Less than 500 feet in front of her, it stopped and then shot straight up into the sky. Once in the air, it arced across the sky. To her, it looked like a shooting star. She says the experience was so terrifying that she did not want to see it ever again.
When the woman arrived home, she saw what appeared to be a large rabbit in the spot where she normally parked her car. She ran inside and went to sleep. When she woke up the next morning, she had a terrible migraine. She had never experienced one before. After her encounter, she reached out to Jon because he lived in the same community and she knew he handled these types of cases. He could tell the experience shook her up quite a bit.
That day, Jon went around the woman's car with a compass to look for magnetic anomalies. He found two areas that had an intense magnetic attraction. One was just behind the driver's door panel, and the other was just in front of the passenger door. He says that if you took a string and tied it between both points, the string would go right through the driver. He and Stan think that when the ball was flying alongside her car, it must have been scanning or doing something to the vehicle that went through her and caused her migraine.
Stan says that for people who have first-hand experiences with paranormal phenomena, it is something that they never forget. Jon says that they have investigated many UFO sightings, but one of the more fascinating cases involved Hoss Lors, a non-Navajo resident of the reservation living near Greasewood, Arizona. Hoss spent ten years on the reservation teaching English as a second language.
Hoss had been living near Greasewood for about a year when his sightings began to occur. Satan's Butte, a barren, flat-top mesa, was near his home. One night in 2008, around dusk, he went out to feed his horses when an odd light in the sky caught his attention. He could not figure out what it was. A few nights later, he saw a "large ship" hovering above Satan's Butte, very close to where he had seen the other light.
Hoss says the ship went straight across the sky and then dipped down. It had red lights along the front. Coming out of it were tendrils of light that looked like teardrops as they dropped to the ground. The light was coming from inside the ship. He was not sure if the tendrils were little "UFO ships", but he noticed that they were glowing.
One week later, Hoss saw the ship again. He grabbed his camera and took several pictures of it and its lights. After reviewing the photographs and other evidence, Stan and Jon felt that, from an investigator's standpoint, Hoss; sightings were "outstanding". Hoss says that none of the Navajo people he talked to were shocked by what he had seen. Before his sightings, he was a skeptic and did not think aliens or UFOs existed. However, the Navajo Nation taught him that there are things out there that no one understands.
Another case Stan and Jon investigated involved an old man who lived by himself in the desert. He saw what appeared to be a UFO land near his house. Unknown beings came out of the craft and then walked over and examined his house. Stan and Jon found him to be credible. They also found strange circular pits in the ground near his house. He said the pits were not there before his sighting.
Jon had a UFO experience in 1984 when he and his wife were driving through Arizona. In the early morning hours, he noticed a large cigar-shaped craft about 200 feet off the ground. It had a spotlight shining down on nearby railroad tracks. It made a heavy engine noise and was moving at about fifteen miles per hour. He decided to get out of his car and watch it. His wife was terrified; she screamed for him to get back in the car, which he eventually did.
Jon had another UFO experience on March 12, 1997, while he was living in Leupp. That night, his brother-in-law ran into his house and told him to come outside. Once outside, Jon saw six or seven lights following each other and moving slowly along the horizon. As he watched the lights, he noticed that they were silent and changing colors.
The first light would change from red to green to blue to orange. At some point, it would fluoresce, like a flare going off. It would get brighter and brighter, then dim down and change color. Then, the next light would do the same thing. When Jon looked up the street, he noticed that everyone in the neighborhood had come out to watch the lights.
After a few minutes, the lights gathered together and drifted west toward the Grand Canyon. They kept going until they were out of sight. Jon believed that this would be a big media event. However, the very next day, the Phoenix Lights occurred. As a result, Jon and his neighbors' sighting was essentially forgotten.
According to Stan, the paranormal and the supernatural are already part of Navajo culture. Jon says that the Navajos have stories about paranormal activity that have been passed down for generations. Stan claims that there are images of UFOs among the pictographs and petroglyphs on the walls of Red Rock Canyon, which are thousands of years old. He wonders if the "star people" from Native American folklore are actually extraterrestrial beings.
Jon says there are a lot of unexplainable things that are not talked about because there is such a stigma around them. Stan says that the older generations follow traditional teachings, which state that the paranormal is taboo and should not be talked about. But since the younger generations are not learning those traditions as much, they are more open to experiencing these kinds of things and sharing the information.
One of the most terrifying phenomena that Stan and Jon have investigated is the legendary Navajo Skinwalker, an entity that can shape-shift or change form from a human to an animal. Stan says that most Navajos have heard the term. Jon says a skinwalker can change into a coyote, a wolf, or anything else that they have the skin of. Some believe that skinwalkers are black magic witches who have learned how to shapeshift.
Witnesses have reported seeing skinwalkers in human form on the side of the road. They look like they have white paint blotched all over their bodies. The paint looks cracked. Their hair is long and painted. According to witnesses, skinwalkers can run as fast as a car. Jon says they are dangerous and frightening.
Stan is certain that skinwalkers exist because he has seen one himself. In January 1986, prior to his law enforcement career, he lived on the Navajo reservation near Fort Defiance, Arizona. One night, he borrowed his sister's car and went to the movies. While driving home, he saw something running alongside his vehicle on the inside of a nearby fence. At one point, it jumped over the fence and got within four feet of the passenger side of his car. He says it was keeping up with him at highway speed – at least fifty-five miles per hour.
Stan says that even as he accelerated, the creature kept up with him. He remembers it having the body of a greyhound, but it was solid white from head to toe. Its back was coming up over the side of the door. It had a canine-shaped head, a mouthful of teeth, and a long snout. At one point, he locked eyes with it; its eyes were fiery orange and appeared to be "self-illuminating". He felt like it was looking straight through him. At that point, he floored it. He came sliding into the driveway, jumped out, and ran inside.
Stan's father was still awake, so Stan explained to him what had happened. His father said, "That's a skinwalker". Stan says it was incredible to see it with his own eyes in its actual, "running-on-all-fours" form and know that it is not fantasy or legend. Stan's aunt later sought help from a medicine man. The medicine man said that Stan's skinwalker sighting was tied to someone who was trying to do their family harm. Stan says the only reason people do the "shape-shifting thing" is to harm others.
Jon says that based on his thirty-one-year experience, he can guarantee that skinwalkers are real and deadly. Throughout his career, he never felt that he needed protection. But that changed when he started doing paranormal investigations. He now carries an arrowhead made of black obsidian. In Navajo culture, obsidian can protect you from negative energy.
Stan says that negative energy can attach to people and accumulate. He smudges (a Native American ritual) by burning cedar or sage. He says the smoke removes any negative energy that might be present. Over the years, it has served to protect and guide him while working with the paranormal.
One of the most interesting and eye-opening cases that Stan experienced in his career was a haunting that took place at a three-story government office building in Window Rock, Arizona. Employees told him that there was "crazy" activity going on there. Things would move, fly across the room, and explode. The employees would also hear voices.
During the 1930s, the building was used as a morgue. According to Stan, a female worker received repeated calls on her desk phone. When she would answer it, nobody was there. The phone company was unable to determine where the calls were originating from.
During the investigation, Stan recruited a four-person team to witness what was going on in the building. One of them was Tony Milford, his cousin and a member of the Navajo tribe. Tony was apprehensive about helping because he knew it involved a haunting and a poltergeist.
One weekend, at around 9pm, Stan and his team went into the building. Stan was downstairs when he heard two distinct voices to his left. He could not make out what they were saying to each other. Immediately following that, he heard a coin fall on the floor. He and Tony discovered a quarter on the ground nearby. They did not know where it came from.
Stan says that as an investigator, he always has a certain level of skepticism. He had everybody pull their pockets out, just to make sure nobody had any coins on them. Almost immediately, as they went into the next room, another coin fell. This time, the whole team saw it fall. They realized something was going on there. They wanted to find out why it was happening.
At one point, Stan got hit in the back with a coin. Tony says the coin came at Stan with force. He says they were all facing the area where the coin came from. They could not figure out exactly where the coins were coming from. There were no nearby vents or holes in the roof.
Later that evening, Stan noticed several coins scattered on a desk. When they came back to the desk, the coins were stacked up on their own. Stan kept the coins from the investigation. There were sixty-five coins of various U.S. denominations. They all landed heads up. He concluded that it was a spirit saying, "Heads up, I'm here".
The next night, another investigator, Dusty, was at Stan's house. While they were sitting at a table working, a quarter fell behind Stan, landing in the middle of the floor. Dusty got a digital camera and began taking pictures around the house. Just as he came through the threshold of Stan's bedroom door, five coins fell from the ceiling to the floor. He and Stan knew that whatever had caused the coins to move at the building had followed Stan to his house. And just like at the building, all of the coins landed heads up.
Stan says that most people and cultures believe that everyone has a life force, energy, or soul within them. When a person dies, their life force leaves their body and goes somewhere else. And at times, these life forces make themselves known to the living.
For Stan, the coins helped open his mind to the possibility that there is an underlying commonality among all of the paranormal events. He and Jon believe that all of the different phenomena could be connected through the idea of a multi-universe or dimensional gate. Stan thinks that the coins came from somewhere else. They manifested into our physical world, and he witnessed that.
Stan and Jon believe that within the different dimensions are UFOs and beings like Bigfoot. From time to time, these things cross over into our physical world. Stan says that the Navajo creation stories kind of fit into this idea. In one of the stories, called "The Emergence", the Navajo people came through several different worlds to get to ours. According to the story, the people saw a hole in the sky and climbed through it. Jon thinks that the "hole" is actually a dimensional gate that they came through to get to this world. He thinks it is possible that those gates still exist, even though we cannot see them.
According to Jon, the paranormal investigations constituted less than 1% of everything that he and Stan did as Navajo Rangers. But when they did happen, they were very significant and "amazing". He retired in 2012, but he misses their investigations. Stan also no longer works for the department, but he has not stopped helping people, especially the ones who are living in fear. He wants them to know that they have someone to talk to about their experiences.
Jon says he and Stan are always looking for answers, no matter how crazy they might seem. Stan says there is so much more to the universe and our world than what is right here in front of us. He says that we have only begun to "scratch the surface".
Jon says he gets asked all the time, "Do you believe in Bigfoot? Or UFOs? Or Navajo witchcraft?" He does not like to use the term "believe", because believing is an act of faith based on no evidence. He is certain that these things are real. Stan says that science today might look at their paranormal cases and say, "That can't happen. That's make-believe". But he says these things did happen, and science cannot explain them. Jon says people have been skeptical of their work, and he expects that. All he can say to them is, "You weren't there. You didn't see what I saw".
Case Files:

  • San Juan River Bigfoot
  • Leupp Orb
  • Satan's Butte UFO
  • Fort Defiance Skinwalker
  • Window Rock Haunting

Notes:

  • This case was first released on October 25, 2022, as a part of the third volume of the Netflix reboot. It was released in the second part of a three-week Halloween event.
  • Brenda's story was also profiled on "Ghost Adventures".
  • The woman who saw the orb was filmed in silhouette.

Links:

Community content is available under CC-BY-SA unless otherwise noted.
Advertisement

Fan Feed

More Unsolved Mysteries Wiki