Stanley Milford, Jr., a retired law enforcement officer, is the perfect guy to write a book like The Paranormal Ranger. Rather than coming across as a showman or a snake oil salesman, Milford is unassuming, compassionate, logical, humble, multicultural. Perhaps most importantly, he is credible. That makes The Paranormal Ranger worth reading for anyone interested in things that happen on the borders of the explainable. 
Milford is the son of a mother raised Baptist and a father raised more in First Nations traditions. Therefore, Milford grew up in what I’ll call Western cosmology, as well as Navajo cosmology. He understands and appreciates the scientific method and materialist lens to explain the world, as well as Navajo views of creation, causality, and reality. Therefore, when it comes to paranormal events, he has a unique point of view on investigating as far as one can and then being comfortable with mystery. It isn’t an either/or for Milford. He practices intellectual humility, which is an amazing trait for anyone to display these days.
Milford spent years working as a Navajo Ranger – working as law enforcement in the Navajo community. Most of Milford’s work was common police work, although Navajo Rangers were responsible for larger territories than would be common for a typical law enforcement organization in the U.S. However, Milford and his partner also worked a smaller but interesting number of paranormal-type cases. These included things like hauntings, livestock slaughtered by unknown mammalian creatures, and UFO sightings.
Most important to Milford in his investigation of the paranormal cases was that people who experienced paranormal events were treated with dignity and respect. Through anecdotal stories of people who have encountered things like hauntings, skinwalkers, and cryptids, he explains how such people can feel invaded, victimized, and ostracized; how unmooring an experience can be when it does not harmonize with one’s understanding of the world. Some of the stories he shares are genuinely scary, including some hauntings and his own experience with a silent skinwalker.
Even if the paranormal isn’t your thing, you may enjoy Milford’s critique of Western vs. Navajo thought. He sees the downplaying of paranormal events and mythology as implicitly a degradation of Navajo culture. He sees the need to reduce an experience into an explanation or category that does not truly fit as a Western preference. Milford also points out that social taboos and urban myths, in any culture, often serve to regulate behavior and community safety. This point reminded me a bit of Dr. Emily Zarka’s fantastic Monstrum on PBS.
Ambiguity and mystery are just part of life to Milford. Some situations aren’t solved, so much as acknowledged.
I enjoyed my time with Mr. Milford. If nothing else, I took away a great reminder that universe is big and I am small.
3.5/5 rounded up.