September 3, 2021 • 56 mins
If you travel to the southern side of Alaska's Kenai Peninsula today, you'll find little more than ruins and wildlife. Almost a century ago, this place was called Portlock, Alaska -- a small but thriving town at the edge of the northern frontier. By 1950, the town had been completely abandoned. So what happened, and why do so many people seem to think Portlock is cursed?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We are joined as always with our super
producer Paul Mission controlled decans. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. We're going on a journey today,
fellow conspiracy realists. We are traveling to the far North.
(00:47):
We're headed to Alaska, and we are looking for a town.
It's a place you could easily miss unless you knew
exactly where you were going and you knew exactly what
you were looking for. This is a story of disaster,
it's a story of death, and some would have you
believe it is a story of monsters. Today's question, what
(01:09):
happened to port Lock, Alaska before we begin? Uh? Not? Noel?
Had you guys heard of this town before before we
started researching this. I had not. When I first came
upon the stuff, and you know, shared it around with everybody,
I had never heard of it. I had never even
(01:29):
heard of the peninsula that we're gonna be talking about
this this whole area. Um, I know nothing. I just
know it's frontier, it's Alaska. And I remember tiny bits
of some of the history, uh from do you remember
that Discovery show that came out a long time ago, Ben?
(01:49):
It was like it was the first fiction show that
Discovery was making and it was about Alaska. Didn't our
Ceo connal Burne have something to do with that back
in his Discovery days? I think so. I just remember
I remember looking up quite a bit of Alaska around
that time and just learning about how, you know, you
(02:10):
think the American West as it was, you know, changing
and as Westerners were moving out to the West, like
how rough that was, but then realizing just how tough
it was to exist in Alaska in you know, the
earth in those earlier times, um, eighteen hundreds, uh even
(02:34):
the early nineteen hundreds, Well, what was the impetus to
settle out there? Ben, Like, I mean it seemed like
so inhospitable. Was there Was it about establishing trade or
were there resources to exploit or a combination? Yeah? Both?
And then later it became an important and remains an
important geopolitical barrier. Uh, during the days of the Cold War.
(02:58):
Alaska is very very US to Russia, right, and so
it behooves the US at least in their calculations too,
have something between their continent and Russia. This this place
is inhospitable, it is still dangerous. Will probably allude to
(03:18):
this a couple of times in today's episode. But a
few years back, Paul Michigan trol and I traveled to Alaska,
and I believe was the first time for both of us.
This was in the production of a show called Missing
in Alaska, which also centers around a mystery in the
far North. And uh, yeah, it's it's very much on
(03:39):
the edge of the wild in a way that many
residents of the US would be unfamiliar with and would
perhaps would perhaps uh find dangerous. But I'm sorry. Where
where did you guys travel to when you made that? Sure? Yeah,
we were in Anchorage, Alaska. That's where that's the one
of the easiest places to fly, and and we landed there.
(04:02):
We were there for about two weeks and we were
gathering gathering footage, gathering tape, gathering interviews, and Paul traveled
to I don't want to stay too much without spoiling
this story, but Paul and our host traveled to a
incredibly remote location in Alaska on the open ocean and
(04:24):
UH to an island searching for a plane crash. Those
are the teasers. The show is available for free on
your podcast platform of choice, smash that like and subscribe
button or whatever people say nowadays. I guess my my
point is you you guys have personal experience just being
in Alaska, though it is a massive place, and specifically
(04:47):
on an island, So like experiencing the water, like the
shores and the water and how frigid and how dangerous
that can be. Yeah, So it may surprise people to
know that even in the modern day, UH, life in
many parts of Alaska is at the mercy of nature
(05:07):
in the passage of the seasons. So there are times
where uh the ocean may simply be uh non navigable
in certain parts right. And there are for instance, when
we were out working on this, we were racing against
time because we had seasoned experts and veterans pilots captains
(05:30):
who were saying, look, I've been doing this for decades
and if X, Y and Z don't come together before
you know, this season hits, then you're gonna have to
wait another year. Uh. And that's just that's just the
reality of living with nature in a way that many
people don't nowadays because the majority of human beings live
(05:53):
in urban areas. But this, this sets the stage just
you know, we're going to a very rutal place. Here
are the facts. Nowadays, port Lock, or what port Lock
used to be. The site where port Lock was located
is abandoned. This was once a pretty bustling hive of
activity at the very edge of the frontier. It is located,
(06:17):
as you said, Matt, on the on the very southern
edge of something called the Canai Peninsula. That's right. And
the closest town is a little bitty place about sixteen
miles to the north called Seldovia, Um, which has a
distinctly Nordic quality to the to the name um. And
just to give you an idea of exactly how remote
(06:38):
this place is, Seldovia only has around three hundred residents.
There are no roads leaving in or out, and it
can only be reached by a small plane or boat
because there's obviously an airport, so it'd have to be
one of those like planes that land on the water,
if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, and the same really goes
for Port Adam or Port Lock. Where what we're talking
(07:02):
about here, and if you look at it on a map,
you guys, it's it's at the edge of nowhere. There's ocean.
There are a few islands right outside of where it is,
like some tiny little islands, and there's you know, some
state parks around it, and Port Graham and then like
you said, Peladovia and that's like, that's it. It's uh,
(07:25):
it's it's incredible to imagine that people showed up there
and started work to create any kind of living quarters
or even a business. Yeah. And the story already gets
a little bit confusing because this place was known as
port Lock, and a lot of people outside of Alaska
and outside of this region will refer to it as
(07:48):
port Lock, but people who live in the area often
used the free often use the name Port Chatham interchangeably.
That's because Portlock is located in Port chat Bay, but
there's another nearby community called Port Chatham. Additionally, there are
a ton of places named ports something or other in Alaska.
(08:10):
Why this sounds a little weird at first, Here's why
it is important to remember modern exploration of the area,
by which we mean after native people have been living
there for thousands of years. Uh, modern exploration of the
area depended heavily on maritime transportation of resources and people.
There were no planes, there was any air travel, and
(08:32):
the brutal realities of overland crossing. Even now with modern
roads and the internal combustion engine, even even now it's
still difficult. But back then you would be naturally limited
to how much you could take by like traveling by
foot or traveling by sled, what have you. And you know,
(08:53):
also you have to have honest conversations with your fellow travelers,
like how much are we were willing to risk for this?
You know, is it is it worth it? Just the
way a year for a boat, uh, instead of you know,
just trying to get out there and hope we make
it back. This is is a crazy time. It's something
that a lot of people might find hard to understand,
(09:14):
but it was reality for many, many people for for
decades and decades and decades, and it's Uh. The town
itself is named after a guy named Nathaniel Portlock's a
sea captain maritime fur trader. He was active in the
area in the late seventeen hundreds, specifically seventeen eighty six.
They took that that's like the claim to fame, if
(09:37):
you want to call it that. And this originally started
out as purely a business town. It was a salmon
cannering and it later led to some other business operations,
some kind of more industrial manufacturing. There was a chro
might mining operation, and they named the site Chrome, I'm assuming,
which is also what the Google browser is named after. UM.
(09:58):
Probably not, but led to it really being a place
of note enough that a post office was established in
Portlock in ninete, but it would still be sometime twenty
plus years in fact, well a little less than twenty
years before it appeared on the U S Census, but
it was still listed as an unincorporated village with a
(10:21):
population of thirty one, which as we know, is not
quite accurate. UM. But most of the town's history UH
consisted of a population that was largely made up of
Russian um expats and Allouits, which would be what in
the indigenous kind of tribal folk of that area of
that region. And there's a really interesting history in this
(10:44):
entire area of these Russian allout schools. Uh, that's it's
not necessarily stuff they don't want you to know, at
least to my mind right now, but fascinating history. Recommend
you look into that if you have some time for yourself. Yeah,
I believe that was a territorial school in the area
at the time and in that population. Makes sense because uh,
(11:08):
the the value it. We're already there, as were the
other indigenous people, and again had been there for a
very very very long time, and then Russian travelers, Russian
explorers were the closest other people who could get there,
So it makes sense that they would show at first
if we were all to travel there now you listening today,
(11:29):
and and the stuff they don't want you to know, Gang,
we would see little more than ruins. There's an old
mining tunnel and some rusted cannery equipment, sad skeletal remains
of houses. It's all being slowly eaten away by nature.
But there's a legend about this town, and it's a
place some locals don't like to visit. You see. Around
(11:52):
nineteen nine people started leaving in droves on mass By
nineteen fifty, that post office Noel mentioned had closed and
this effectively brought an end to port Lock, Alaska. So
what happened Here's where it gets crazy. We're already here. Yeah,
well we've got there's a lot of stuff going on.
(12:14):
So for many people in the area, port Locks mysterious
depopulation is not just a sad story of gentrification or
failing business. It's the story of a monster. And what
we'd like to do with you now, folks, is share
the story as it's generally presented. So gather around with
us in your mental camp fire. Get a little closer
(12:36):
to the flame, not just for the heat, but for
the light, because there's darkness all around us. A few
years after the establishments of this salmon cannery, people began disappearing.
And you can read about this story if you want
to see the full thing, in places like Alaska Magazine
and in Today's Alaska a couple other places. So if
(12:59):
you want to find your own sources, go ahead up
and head out there, and you'll read very much the
same stories that we're about to tell you here, and then, uh,
later on, we'll also tell you the primary source that
they're all exactly. But here, let's tell the story. As
you said, Ben, there are many. There are several people
that met untimely deaths out in Port Lock, at least
(13:24):
according to the stories or disappearances or disappearances sometimes mangled bodies.
Who knows. But there's a person named Andrew Camlock who
was said to have gone out logging in nineteen thirty one,
and he was discovered dead from a blow to his head,
and there was some logging equipment found near him that
(13:47):
may or may not have been part of his death. Sure,
I mean, there's plenty of accidents that can befall you
in situations like that, we're working with heavy machinery or
heavy equipment UM, or even just you know, having to
climb and maybe take a fall. So there's certainly other explanations.
But then we get into Tom Larson. Tom Larson went
(14:08):
out to also chop wood, maybe less of an industrial thing,
more just like you know, splitting logs um. And he
claims to have seen something quote large and hairy um
on the beach. So he went back to his house
and he got his rifle, uh, and he found this
this creature to still be kind of lurking around the
area when he got back, and they got into a
(14:29):
bit of us staring competition. Uh, and Larson did not
did not shoot at the time. UM, and so in
according to some of those stories, they all posit he
doesn't know why he didn't pull the trigger, right, because
a lot of that is copy pasted to be candid.
And the UH, one thing that maybe the more skeptical
(14:51):
in the crowd would know to already at this point
is the following. And I'm fine to say it. I
know it's it's cold, but it's true. People are very
good at dying. It's the one thing every person successfully
does at some point. So, UH, we have to what
we have to endeavor to stick to what what we know.
(15:13):
There's a lot of speculation surrounding came look, and there
are a lot of speculation surrounding these other incidents, like
hunters tracking a moose who found that something else appeared
to be tracking the same creature, something that left eighteen
inch human like or primate like footprints. Side note, if
you have been tracking stuff through snowy whether you know that, uh,
(15:37):
depending on the climate at the time and how much
time has passed, Uh, those footprints kind of road and
look larger than they originally were. And either way, these
hunters came across a flattened spot in the brush, and
that's where they believe this large animal this way for
it big footed animal didn't just kill a moose, but
(15:59):
was large enough and powerful enough to pick the carcass
up and carry it away. If you have ever seen
a moose that is terrifying. It is, and I mean
they're you know there. This is the kind of thing
that is the stuff of legends. So you're gonna get
different accounts of this and people adding their own details.
But I've certainly heard versions of the story where it
looked like some sort of you know, melee had taken
(16:20):
place between these animals or or whatever the other thing was,
and that there was there were signs of blood even
in in the snow and on the on the brush. Yes.
And then there's one little other thing that gets added
sometimes that they followed the footprints until they vanished. They
began to vanish into the fog as they went up
(16:42):
a mountain, and that's why, according to legend, locals will
still tell you to avoid the area on a foggy day.
There's also stories of people like a gold miner from
nearby Port Graham. It's different ports, not Port Chadaman's Port
Graham who one day went off to the mines or
when off to look for gold and never returned. You
(17:02):
also hear again numerous reports of mutilated bodies being found
as cannary employees disappeared into the hills and the wilderness,
only to wash up later in nearby streams. In many
of these cases, as you can probably already ascertain right
the events have been embellished online or by fringe researchers
(17:24):
who often are putting a good story over solid facts.
Sometimes they will do what I what we sometimes call
the Ancient Aliens thing, and this is where they'll relay
the stuff they've read from whatever source they found, and
almost all of it ultimately comes from as we'll see,
a really small collection of sources, and then they'll pose
(17:47):
their own embellishments, not as statements, but in a little
bit more weasily way as questions. Is like, so if
you've seen an episode of Ancient Aliens and they'll say
something like the stone work and the masonry of Machu
Picchu remains unexplainable by modern standards. What if they had helped,
what if there was some other civilization at play? Where
(18:11):
did they come from could it be related to the
stories of Atlantis or other ancient incredibly advanced civilizations. Could
it be Aliens? Cut to commercial and we're back. We
really did it. We did the we did the move
(18:33):
Commercial African already right. For for those of us who
were fascinated by cryptids or by the concept of cryptids,
this feels like it has all the ingredients of a lurid,
perfect monster story. And that's why if you, like us,
started reading about port Lock on various internet forums today
(18:55):
or in books about Sasquatch or Bigfoot, you'll a lot
of people claim, Hey, something like Bigfoot was active in
this area, was responsible for these attacks. But it's tough because,
you know, when you go back to primary sources, aside
from the one witness who survived Larson, it doesn't seem
(19:17):
like a lot of other people made it to the
other side of these encounters. And that would seem oddly
aggressive for Sasquatch, which is, you know, basically the world's
reigning hide and seek champion if it exists, I mean,
it's famously reclusive like a lot of other large fauta.
You know, bears are not bears don't wake up excited
(19:37):
to come see you. They don't know why you're around,
and it's irritating and confusing and frightening to them. And
we can assume the same could be said of a
lot of other large animals, um except for you know,
some of the big cats and hippos, uh and crocodiles.
Those creatures will actively hunt you. I just had an
(19:59):
image just being hunted the alligators specifically. Okay, push that
out of my mind. Oh sorry, nile crocodiles will actively
stock people. Okay, they don't care, they do not care.
But but it's I mean, it's interesting because I forgot
to mention this. Like I thought I had never heard
(20:20):
of port Lock, but I believe I have heard a
fictionalized version of it. Fictionalized in that it doesn't it
doesn't purport to be true. It's a horror story called
The Men from Poor Lock, which is by excellent writer
named Laird Baron. If you enjoy horror, then do check
out his short stories. And you know, have a source
of light nearby if you're easily spooked. Do we know
(20:43):
do we know roughly when that was published or like
the era? You know, I'd have to I'd have to
go back and check, Matt. Yeah, it couldn't have been
too long ago. I believe it was in maybe this
uh anthology that comes out every year called Best Horror
of the Year. That might be it um edited by
(21:03):
someone Ellen Datlow. So pretty confident it came out after right, Oh, yes, yes,
very much. The laird Baron is alive. He was not
writing this in or anything like that. So, which will
make sense when you see how the legend builds. So
you'll see books with titles like Abandoned the History and
(21:24):
Horror of Port Chadom, Alaska, and they lean into this
idea that a monster attacked the town uh and ultimately
drove everyone out, but they don't dig into a lot
of the context or details there. And you know that's
not a ding on the book. That's that's the choice
these these authors made, and I believe in the case
(21:46):
of in the case of Abandoned, there's also a video, right,
there's a video piece of people hunting or attempting to
find uh, something like bigfoot in the area. Oh, there's
a whole special you can find titled in Search of
the Port Chatham harry Man. That's the one. Yeah, is
is that with Leonard nimoy h Nope, it's not in
(22:09):
search of Colin. It's just called that I misunderstood. I
was gonna be like, he's not that Harry. No, No,
This one, uh was directed by Josiah Martin and written
by Larry Baxter, and it features what's his name, Stephen T.
Major person you may may or may not recognize, may not? Okay, Oh, yes,
(22:36):
Larry Beans Baxter. That's the people call him beans. That's true.
I was, yes, I was reading about him. But but like,
here's here's the question, and we'll get into monsters just
a second. But for now, it's important to remember that
a lot of people immediately shut down when they hear
this sort of explanation. For many people, many people listening
(22:59):
to the show to a the concept of a violent
human like creature a bigfoot fighting back against mankind's encroachment,
or would it be gentrification at that point, I don't know, unclear.
I guess it depends on how close those are the
human It's a nonstarter, right, people are saying these things
(23:20):
don't exist, therefore they could not be a reasonable explanation.
But either way, wherever you find yourself on the skepticism scale,
the fact of the matter is that Port Lock, Alaska
is abandoned, and for one reason or another, the town
shut down completely, which means that something had to happen.
(23:40):
And if you dig into the stories about the town's demise,
you see that you can trace the sources. Many of
the lurid tales of the disappearances and the purported deaths
come from a single author, primarily an article written by
Naomi cloudah in two thousand and nine for the Homer
(24:03):
Tribute and Brian Dunning over at Skepti, which of course
you can tell by the title is a source with
an angle. Dunning points out that cloud has work itself
hinges on two sources, and one of those is an
article that she also wrote way back in three for
a different outfit, the Anchorage Daily News. So she's taking
(24:25):
some of that information from the seventies and carrying it
on to this two thousand nine article, which you can
read in full online. And I believe you can find
the text of the full nineteen seventy three article uh
in in the archive at an Alaskan library. I can't
remember which one, and I'll just tell you the easiest
way to find the article that was later written based
(24:47):
off that. I had to go to the way back
Machine on archive dot org and you I searched for
Homer Tribune and her name Naomi Clouda, and you can
find it. The artic is titled Port Chatham Left to
Spirits and that's spelled c H A t h A
m H Holy One. So the second source is a
(25:10):
little more interesting, I think, because it's closer to the
actual events. A couple of people who grew up in
Port Lock survived and they moved with their families to
Port Graham, and they were living in Port Gram at
the time that they were interviewed by Clouda, and they
were interviewed through a translator. These interviewees are the inspiration
(25:34):
for Clouda's speculation on the cryptic angle. It's also fair
to assume that while they might be the only people interviewed,
they were sharing a belief that was not uncommon for
folks at the time and possibly as has been reported
in the modern day. Let's focus on one of the interviewees,
Melania helen Kell. She talked about those now typical tales
(25:58):
disappearance and death. This was regional folklore by this point,
and it's something that Clouda was well aware of, but
Kel was able to do something pretty significant. She added
specific details. She was the person who would say, oh,
you know that logger, his name was, for instance, Andrew
Camlock or something like that. And when she was talking
(26:19):
about this stuff, she and some other people are the
ones who introduced the idea of supernatural involvement of a
local supernatural entity, something called the non t knock in
a N T I I and a Q. It's to
make it feel a little more like a spelling exactly.
(26:41):
And then you know, this is something that would have
been from the lore of of of the indigenous people.
I mean, so it's interesting to have that detail. And
not only is this a cryptid type bigfoot creature that
you know, has corporeal personification, I guess in this you know,
um potentially violent um animal for lack of a better term.
(27:04):
It's meant to also be sort of a spiritual deity,
like a demon of some sort, like some kind of
malevolent force um. And they believed, according to kell Uh,
that this was some kind of curse that was escalating
and it was just going to keep getting worse and
worse and no worse, and these patterns they were seeing,
we're just going to continue until something was done about it,
(27:28):
or until they just you know, said hey, we're out
of here. Yeah, so she said. Kell says that this
was this creature was the reason her parents that they
had to leave town. They said, look, there's an escalating
pattern of attacks, honey, that's why we're leaving. But we're
not going far. We're just going over to the next
port town. And it really isn't that far from from
(27:52):
where they were living. So it's weird to think that,
you know, we're we're under attack here in this very
pacific place. But if we just travel a little bit
over the land or around, you know, from this port,
just around to this other port, will be fine. Um,
it's weird to imagine that. So in my mind when
(28:15):
I think about it, I think of a territorial animal
that that you know, lives in a very specific place.
It's not like there are a bunch of these nonto knocks,
you know, living all around the area the way you know,
I guess I don't know why I'm thinking squirrel populations,
but like wolves or or anything you may find out
there in the wilderness of Alaska. Uh, it's more of
(28:38):
a like a family or a single thing that lives
in one spot. Right. Yeah, it's an important point because
it's supposed to. If we're talking about something that's a
supernatural entity, then it is completely possible for it to
be very long lived, perhaps immortal, right, And it is
(28:59):
possible for it to be a single thing. So that's
why you don't see a lot of questions about what
would the active range of this creature be, what would
it scat look like, where would it nest, how would
it reproduce? Anyhow? This sounds like big news. Everybody in
towd left because there's a monster that is killing people
(29:20):
and mutilating them. If these attacks were happening multiple times
over a period of years, and they were indeed escalating,
culminating in this exodus from nineteen fifty or so, uh,
multiple papers of the date would have probably mentioned it, right,
Probably that would have been a way to sell papers,
(29:40):
one would think. I mean, if it bleeds, it leads,
and there was blood all over the snow of of
port Lock, right. Um. I don't know if we mentioned this,
but these injuries, I mean, at least according to many
of these primary sources, which can get deluded in the
retelling you know of of this tale. These injuries weren't
typical injury us that you'd see, you know, done by
(30:01):
like a bear attack or a wolverine attack or something.
These were much more grizzly and like, you know, like
essentially being almost mutilated and torn limb from limb in
some kind of borderline ritualistic way. At least that's what
that's what people the modern day are saying, right if you.
The thing is to the point about the idea that
(30:23):
multiple papers would be highly incentivized to write about this,
not even not even just for money. Let's not be
entirely cynical about this. Papers were a way to warn
people and help them, so there would be an ethical
journalistic responsibility arguably to spread word of this. But the
thing is they don't. The Library of Congress has hundreds
(30:47):
of thousands of archived records from newspapers in Alaska dating
all the way back to the late seventeen hundreds to
the time of Nathaniel Portlock himself, and some of these
stories who actually mentioned this tiny town of Portlock. And
when they mentioned this tiny town of Portlock, they talk
about the business there, which is why the town existed.
(31:08):
They talked about stuff like fishing and the canary, and
maybe a little bit about mining chro might They do
not mention anything about a rash of unexplained to deaths,
disappearances and mutilations the ones because they don't want to.
They don't want to scare people away from the canary. Dude,
the salmon is still there. I mean, that's not that's
(31:30):
not far off from what could possibly be the case.
I mean, they depended on this for their very existence
and sustenance, and they had this industry that if no
one will work, the industry fizzles, and it already was
a very very small, you know, industry to begin with. Yeah,
and that's a good point, and a counterpoint to that
would be that the more powerful newspapers of the time
(31:50):
would not have been affected by that town getting bad press.
They would have benefited from it. So but but either way,
the fact is it didn't get reported. Was it a
cover up? Was it because in their mind there was
nothing to report. We'll leave the we'll leave the ultimate
answer to you folks, as always. But what we did
(32:13):
find is that there was a story about crime. There's
one hilarious story about crime, and it's about the postmaster.
Because remember we said the post office started, which really
put a stample legitimacy on the town. The guy at
the time, the postmaster, George Hank, was arrested by g
men got caught with a gallon of moonshine. No Sasquatch
(32:37):
was believed to be involved. Yeah, but maybe George and
some other folks were dealing in some serious moonshine production
out there somewhere and it was organized and what you
could even call them organized criminals. Wait, wait a second, now,
I'm just joking. That's that's my speculation and like coming
(32:58):
up with ideas because I have this one at just
an example. Uh So, like as and disappearances, did Good reported,
there was one reported in nineteen twenty, and then later
before then there was a report of a boat being
found in nineteen seventeen. And the boat that washed ashore
(33:22):
and Port Luck was the same kind of boat that
these two hunters had set off on from Seward, Alaska
before they disappeared. You know, it's kind of like saying,
Paul and Nol leave on a road trip to the Southwest,
and they were leaving in a Ford Mustang, and then
(33:44):
later in Texas someone found a Ford Mustang and you
guys disappeared. Yeah, yeah, that's something we would do. So
it doesn't explain you know what I mean, It doesn't
directly link anybody. So this is so that's the reporting
you can find from the day that seems to be
(34:04):
largely like the fact based documentation of that time. That
doesn't mean these things didn't happen, but it does definitely
mean the people that we're supposed to be reporting on
these for some reason to die. Yeah. No, I agree.
It is weird that there's nothing written there and we've like,
we can't stress that enough. It is weird, and if
(34:26):
there was something really going on that is weird. I
want to talk specifically about this creature, this Nanto Knock
whatever or non to Knock whatever that thing is, because
some of the attacks, some of the lore that's been
generated around this thing doesn't feel so much like a
(34:46):
big Foot to me. It feels more like stuff I've
read about a different legendary creature, a when to Go
and and I know there's some similarities here, but whend
it goes a very different creature. I just wonder if
there if we found anything that shows Bigfoot maybe wasn't
the original culprit or the original legendary creature that. Yeah, yeah,
(35:12):
that's a great question. So let's go back to the monsters.
What exactly is a non to know? It is originally
not a big foot. It comes from a dialect that
is extant on the Kenai Peninsula and the the languages
here are rich and diverse. There are a ton of
different languages. This word itself, none to know seems to
(35:35):
be a loanword from another language. So the original word
would be something like nontina, which means literally those who
steal people. And there's not a connection to cannibalism right
the way there is often with the wind to go.
This thing was more like a boogeyman, more like a
(35:57):
thing you would tell your kids about to make sure
they didn't go outside, like like a bamba duke in
a situation. Uh well, it reminds you maybe tales of
witches in you know, the frontiers of the United States
as it's being settled in the mainland, where the tales
of witches where that they will steal you away basically
(36:19):
if you're a child. Um at least some of those
some of those tales were that. Yeah, and and a
lot of that's I mean, that's an oral tradition of
getting kids to bath right. Well, yeah, and just be
aware of of all the things that can harm you
if you're a small child, especially predators and real, real,
(36:39):
real animals. Yeah, whether you're talking about like El Coco
or the Sacman or the Aswang or whatever. The various
features of these creatures or entities may differ, but ultimately
the gist is there's something bad out there in the dark.
Stay inside and don't wander away, even if it's daytime.
(37:02):
If I can't keep an eye on you, you're doing
something bad, kid, and there will be consequences and I
have to chop all that would so we don't freeze
later this year, so I can't just look at you
the whole time. So yeah, this this thing did not
the description of it did not originally fit what we
understand to be the description of Bigfoot. But over the
(37:25):
decades since this incident, various authors have conflated the two concepts.
So now people will understandably but incorrectly assume non is
another word for sasquatch, which it is not. And the
question of whether these authors made this conflation as an
honest error or whether they did it as a purposeful
(37:48):
embellishment is a little tougher to determine. You'd have to
go to each person and figure it well. And I
know this, I know that Sasquatch. You know, myths often
associate them them having some sort of interdimensional powers where
they can, you know, move very quickly or do various
things that you might ascribe to a supernatural being or deity.
(38:09):
And to me, the non to not just takes that
a step further, like it's almost like a spiritual being
first and then like uh, embodiment of this creature second,
which is why I see where you're going with the
Windigo thing, Matt, because that's sort of very similar to
that where it's a malevolent spirit that is out to
cause havoc and uh, you know, wreck the lives of
(38:32):
those in its wake, you know. Yeah, And so we
see this transformation and this is common in folklore, right,
Myths com mingle and they speak with one another, so
well like the the issue, though, is Kell and other
locals at the times of interviews did seem adamant certain
(38:54):
that at least in their memory, this monster, this entity
was the reason the growing up of the time gave
for leaving Port Lock, Alaska. And as any parents know,
sometimes these stories you tell your children aren't the hard
facts of a given situation, right you kind of explain
it through what feels like the most efficient, comfortable frame
(39:16):
of reference for that young mind. But there are some
other details I've found regarding the story of Kell's interview.
So I mentioned earlier that there was a translator for
this interview. Believe that translator's name is Sally Ash, and
(39:38):
Sally was able to speak multiple languages, so she was
and she was a cousin of Kell's. She said that
she said that according to the true belief system of
the people, the non to Nook is not like a sasquatch,
(39:59):
more of a as we've described, a supernatural being. And
the idea was that they were reclusive, they didn't really
want to hang out with people. They had been cited,
but they were not trying to run up on you, essentially.
And then for this for this interview for the Homer Tribune,
(40:22):
the one that you know blew up the story. It
seemed that Sally Ash wants to clear the air about
this controversy, and there's a great article about this in
the Anchorage Press. She said that she She said that
this story was kind of manufactured, or at the very
least purposely embellished by Kell, because Kel was getting so
(40:46):
tired of people always asking her whether the story was true,
so she made she spun a tale around a campfire,
And Sally says that my sisters, my cousins, and I
all were there while this was happening, and we didn't
want her to get mad at us, so we don't
want to be disrespectful to her. But later we would
(41:09):
all have a laugh about this. So even this interview
gets called into question later. Still, given that we know
something definitely happened, and given that the stories seem at
least some of the stories hopelessly exaggerated, unprovable, or muddled together,
already becoming a piece of folklore, it's fair to say
there's a missing piece of the puzzle here. What could
(41:31):
it be? At this point? Unless we all go camping
in port Lock, we'll have to make our best guests.
For now. Let's let's get our sleeping bags just in
our rooms here and take a quicknap while we listen
to these ads. And we've returned, let's search for some answers.
(41:53):
Uh Okay, First, make no mistake. As we said at
the top, Alaska was and is a dangers place. Even now,
even if you were in the capital, you can look
out on the horizon and you will have a palpable
sense of being at the edge of the frontier. Even
though Alaska is sparsely populated. Pulled some statistics that might
(42:14):
be interesting. It has the highest rate of missing persons
in the nation. California has the highest number of absolute
missing persons, but Alaska has the highest rate of missing persons.
For every ten thousand people, forty one point eight will
become missing persons. Oh boy, we need we need to
(42:35):
We need to get our missing four one one guy
over here again. Serious. Yeah, this is a lot of
missing people. Okay, that's pretty disturbing. And we talked about
it before. It's about the environment itself, right, It's about
when you need something you may not be able to
get it, like a man made tool or a man
(42:57):
made vehicle or something like that. You may not be
able to use a vehicle. And even in you know,
with the scant kind of infrastructure that they would have
had in this sort of settlement type situation, you know,
back before there was modern technology and stuff that certainly
could make living in Alaska at least a little more
tolerable and less utterly terrifying and dangerous. I mean, it's
(43:22):
not out of the realm of possibility that this number
of disappearances might have happened just organically from like going
out into the wilds and taking a fall, you know,
or because a lot of I believe a lot of
these bodies were discovered in lagoon in a lagoon after
washing down from various rivers that were like higher up
in elevation. So I mean, you know, again, this the
(43:44):
mangling and all of that. We don't have firsthand accounts
or or or images of this, and this is a
lot of this is hearsay are possibly like a way
to explain why are so many people dying, But you
really could just explain it by saying, yeah, it's because
it's a harsh environment. Um, that is a very scary
place to live, and there's many, many, many ways to die.
Like you said, Ben, that's something that human beings are
(44:06):
great at doing, from way back when the first humans
were there two right now, the cold is one of
the biggest things you got to worry about. And if
you are not fully prepared and experienced to go through
cold weather like that, especially if you're on foot, then
it's over and and you're just lost for a while
(44:26):
until your body shows up. And when you are, when
you are in a place without infrastructure support easy access
to medical care, something as small as a broken ankle
can spell the end of your story. You have to
be very careful. So just imagine how much more common
(44:46):
this is back in the day. There's no GPS, there's
no satellite communication, there's someone who's expecting you in a
month or so, so the stakes are high. And secondly,
even now, towns across north of across Canada, the US, Mexico,
and towns across the world only exists when it makes
sense for people to live there. So odds are if
(45:09):
you are listening in the US right now, you are
maybe maybe a day or two, maybe three days away
by a car from an abandoned site near you. And
many ghost towns become depopulated when they're no longer relevant
on trade routes or when the industries they depended on
were no longer relevant to the larger economy. Is why
(45:32):
you see towns across the States that were abandoned when
new railroad lines by passed them, right, and now now
the horse and carriage trade that they depended on is
all going by rail miles and miles north, or miles
and miles south and west, or what have you. This
is also why when you see a new stretch of
(45:53):
interstate passing through a different town, people from the town
that was no longer convenient by the interstate would tend
to move. There would be brain drain, there would be
population drain. And with this in mind, it's quite possible
that the real murderer of port Lock, Alaska may have
been something as simple and as ruthless as progress, that
(46:16):
dastardly progress. I can see this making sense, especially when
you consider what really did happen in the nineteen forties,
because we're talking about like immediately post World War two,
right when the mass exodus occurred, or when the last
people left port Lock, and there's a little coincidence here,
(46:37):
and or just something that happened around the same time.
Alaska Route one ZA Highway was built during the nineteen forties,
and it legitimately fundamentally changed the transportation routes, the game,
the who the whole game of transportation, very very much
so because there's like we mentioned, there's so many ports
(47:00):
in that area ports something brothers. Right, that's because overland travel,
when you're talking about moving weight what it was dangerous,
It was risky, and it was at times unreliable. So
now you have a way to most more safely transport
(47:20):
goods in bulk over land. This means you don't need
as many ships. This means also you don't need as
many ports. And if you live in a town that,
like Portlock, is not accessible from this new roadway from
Alaska Route one, then things are starting to look economically
grim because you've got so if you look at the
(47:41):
map of the peninsula, like matt Side at the top,
what you can see is that Portlock is at the
southern tip, kind of um trending a little bit towards
the western side. And if you look at the way
that Alaska Route one is built, it's on the other
side of that peninsa Youla, it's on the opposite side,
(48:02):
and Port Graham is on the other side of that
peninsula where there are stories of people moving directly from
Portlock to Graham. Right. So in this in this way,
people of port luck we're luckier than some other towns
because they could move and they didn't have to move
too far away. When they moved, they were still close
enough to maintain their lifestyles, their family connections right their communities,
(48:26):
their friends, and they were able to relocate their businesses.
And in fact, there's pretty solid argument to be made
that their businesses would have thrived because of their access
to this new trade route through Route one. So it's
possible then that people like kills parents just told her
a story they thought a kid would understand instead of
(48:48):
walking her through the ins and outs of local economics. Unfortunately,
it looks like the very same person who translated that
story is telling us that it was little more than
a tall tail or a prank. Unfortunately, we'll never know,
as the parents themselves were not interviewed. It's hard with
this kind of stuff because so much of it is
(49:08):
wrapped up in superstition, uh and wrapped up in this
very very harsh existence and this kind of you know,
combination of these indigenous tales and folks that are, you know,
very superstitious, so you get these versions of the story
that really lean into the Oh. But the mutilations were
made by some some hell fire creature that couldn't possibly
(49:30):
walk the earth. Um, you know that we know of
and really muddies the waters. But um, there is the
idea that port Lock simply because again of the nature
of the size of it and the remoteness of it,
that it just became less economically viable. Um. And that's
something that certainly could be leaned into by the skeptical crowd.
(49:52):
But it's still is a place that locals tend to
avoid there even I mean, there are other, uh, superstitious
tales wrapped up in this. I wasn't able to find
a direct primary source, but there are you know, people
who describe the area as haunted and and as of
seeing apparitions and other kind of spooky stuff. Uh not
just you know, a limb from limb tearing monster. Um.
(50:16):
So you can explain this stuff away all you want.
For superstitious people remain superstitious, especially if they're part of
generations of this kind of superstitious storytelling. Yeah. Yeah, people
in Seldovia, Port Graham and other places called non walect
also will You'll find people there saying that the area
(50:37):
is haunted. But with that, you know, you could say
you could say that about a lot of places. Honestly,
you you can go at almost any reach in the
world and you'll see a lot of people who say
this part of I don't even know if I believe
in ghosts, but that abandoned asylum, right, not gonna not
gonna catch me there fully haunted. But but you know,
(51:00):
and they always say, it's of the the people who
died in these mysterious ways. They're the ones that actually
haunt it. Um, not the spirit itself or the creature. Right.
And in this and in that case, you have to
ask how much of that has been generated purposely by
mass media, you know. Um. But but the local aspects,
(51:21):
the regional folklore is true, and there are people possibly
listening with us to the show today who have personally
encountered these tales. We we would love to hear from you.
It's it's also possible that people, of course, most people
don't want to seem credulous or silly or superstitious, so
(51:42):
these beliefs or this discomfort might be something that keep
largely to themselves, to their close friends or their confidants.
You know, It's not something that you start a blog about.
And at the same time, it's possible that various crypto
zoologists and bigfoot hunters exploring the area are whether or
consciously or unconsciously, prioritizing beliefs that support their own hope,
(52:06):
the hope that something exists out there on the edge
of civilization, something both powerful and territorial, more than capable
of pushing humanity back from the edges of the map.
If there were something like this, Alaska is not a
bad candidate as a place for it to call home.
I mean again, if you've seen a moose up close,
(52:28):
but yeah, just a moose, Yeah, and you just go
pick it up and take it with you back up
a mountain. But I'm not going to discount the possibility
that perhaps something exists out there in the peaks, in
the valleys, in the woods, maybe in a cave system.
(52:50):
Something might be out there. I'm just I'm not gonna
say it does I well, I'm gonna say it likely
doesn't exist. But I'm one of those people, man, I
think you might be too, that hopes something is out there. Yeah.
We just don't like poke it. You know, if lots
up on you because I want to poke it, let's go.
(53:11):
I think it's a really bad idea. Matt like you
like those arms? You like those arms? No, okay, because
it will probably rip them from your body. I just
want to make friends and have tea. I gotta have
arms and team at I just want to see as
much as possible, you know what I mean, before the
(53:34):
last sunsets or the last star goes out, or however
you wanna wax poetic about the very end of the
brief candle and all that, right, yeah, etcetera, etcetera. Burn
bright friends. So with this in mind, we pass the
torch to you. Let us know if you have ever
been fortunate enough to explore port Lock, Alaska for yourself,
(53:57):
let us know what you saw. Let us know what
other stories you have heard, whether you think they have
some sand and it doesn't have to be in Alaska.
Every every remote place has some sort of cryptic story.
Whether you're talking about the Mongolian deathworm, whether you're talking
about the abominable snowman or the yety there are. There
(54:21):
are a wealth of stories. Some that are treated just
like tall tales, some that are treated as as realistically
as you would treat another wild animal and the threat
it poses in the wild. We can't wait to hear
from you. We try to make it easy to find
us online, and UH will also the places we're about
(54:43):
to tell you about online are also where you can
find pictures if we ever make it to Port Look,
Alaska and more importantly make it back. That's right. You
can find us on the usual internet places of note.
We are conspiracy stuff on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, conspiracy
stuff show on Instagram. Yes, and we a phone number.
You can call it. It's one eight three three s
(55:03):
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(55:24):
it just like that. If three minutes is not enough
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We are conspiracy at i heart radio dot com. Stuff
(55:56):
they don't want you to know is a production of
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We are joined as always with our super
producer Paul Mission controlled decans. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. We're going on a journey today,
fellow conspiracy realists. We are traveling to the far North.
(00:47):
We're headed to Alaska, and we are looking for a town.
It's a place you could easily miss unless you knew
exactly where you were going and you knew exactly what
you were looking for. This is a story of disaster,
it's a story of death, and some would have you
believe it is a story of monsters. Today's question, what
(01:09):
happened to port Lock, Alaska before we begin? Uh? Not? Noel?
Had you guys heard of this town before before we
started researching this. I had not. When I first came
upon the stuff, and you know, shared it around with everybody,
I had never heard of it. I had never even
(01:29):
heard of the peninsula that we're gonna be talking about
this this whole area. Um, I know nothing. I just
know it's frontier, it's Alaska. And I remember tiny bits
of some of the history, uh from do you remember
that Discovery show that came out a long time ago, Ben?
(01:49):
It was like it was the first fiction show that
Discovery was making and it was about Alaska. Didn't our
Ceo connal Burne have something to do with that back
in his Discovery days? I think so. I just remember
I remember looking up quite a bit of Alaska around
that time and just learning about how, you know, you
(02:10):
think the American West as it was, you know, changing
and as Westerners were moving out to the West, like
how rough that was, but then realizing just how tough
it was to exist in Alaska in you know, the
earth in those earlier times, um, eighteen hundreds, uh even
(02:34):
the early nineteen hundreds, Well, what was the impetus to
settle out there? Ben, Like, I mean it seemed like
so inhospitable. Was there Was it about establishing trade or
were there resources to exploit or a combination? Yeah? Both?
And then later it became an important and remains an
important geopolitical barrier. Uh, during the days of the Cold War.
(02:58):
Alaska is very very US to Russia, right, and so
it behooves the US at least in their calculations too,
have something between their continent and Russia. This this place
is inhospitable, it is still dangerous. Will probably allude to
(03:18):
this a couple of times in today's episode. But a
few years back, Paul Michigan trol and I traveled to Alaska,
and I believe was the first time for both of us.
This was in the production of a show called Missing
in Alaska, which also centers around a mystery in the
far North. And uh, yeah, it's it's very much on
(03:39):
the edge of the wild in a way that many
residents of the US would be unfamiliar with and would
perhaps would perhaps uh find dangerous. But I'm sorry. Where
where did you guys travel to when you made that? Sure? Yeah,
we were in Anchorage, Alaska. That's where that's the one
of the easiest places to fly, and and we landed there.
(04:02):
We were there for about two weeks and we were
gathering gathering footage, gathering tape, gathering interviews, and Paul traveled
to I don't want to stay too much without spoiling
this story, but Paul and our host traveled to a
incredibly remote location in Alaska on the open ocean and
(04:24):
UH to an island searching for a plane crash. Those
are the teasers. The show is available for free on
your podcast platform of choice, smash that like and subscribe
button or whatever people say nowadays. I guess my my
point is you you guys have personal experience just being
in Alaska, though it is a massive place, and specifically
(04:47):
on an island, So like experiencing the water, like the
shores and the water and how frigid and how dangerous
that can be. Yeah, So it may surprise people to
know that even in the modern day, UH, life in
many parts of Alaska is at the mercy of nature
(05:07):
in the passage of the seasons. So there are times
where uh the ocean may simply be uh non navigable
in certain parts right. And there are for instance, when
we were out working on this, we were racing against
time because we had seasoned experts and veterans pilots captains
(05:30):
who were saying, look, I've been doing this for decades
and if X, Y and Z don't come together before
you know, this season hits, then you're gonna have to
wait another year. Uh. And that's just that's just the
reality of living with nature in a way that many
people don't nowadays because the majority of human beings live
(05:53):
in urban areas. But this, this sets the stage just
you know, we're going to a very rutal place. Here
are the facts. Nowadays, port Lock, or what port Lock
used to be. The site where port Lock was located
is abandoned. This was once a pretty bustling hive of
activity at the very edge of the frontier. It is located,
(06:17):
as you said, Matt, on the on the very southern
edge of something called the Canai Peninsula. That's right. And
the closest town is a little bitty place about sixteen
miles to the north called Seldovia, Um, which has a
distinctly Nordic quality to the to the name um. And
just to give you an idea of exactly how remote
(06:38):
this place is, Seldovia only has around three hundred residents.
There are no roads leaving in or out, and it
can only be reached by a small plane or boat
because there's obviously an airport, so it'd have to be
one of those like planes that land on the water,
if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, and the same really goes
for Port Adam or Port Lock. Where what we're talking
(07:02):
about here, and if you look at it on a map,
you guys, it's it's at the edge of nowhere. There's ocean.
There are a few islands right outside of where it is,
like some tiny little islands, and there's you know, some
state parks around it, and Port Graham and then like
you said, Peladovia and that's like, that's it. It's uh,
(07:25):
it's it's incredible to imagine that people showed up there
and started work to create any kind of living quarters
or even a business. Yeah. And the story already gets
a little bit confusing because this place was known as
port Lock, and a lot of people outside of Alaska
and outside of this region will refer to it as
(07:48):
port Lock, but people who live in the area often
used the free often use the name Port Chatham interchangeably.
That's because Portlock is located in Port chat Bay, but
there's another nearby community called Port Chatham. Additionally, there are
a ton of places named ports something or other in Alaska.
(08:10):
Why this sounds a little weird at first, Here's why
it is important to remember modern exploration of the area,
by which we mean after native people have been living
there for thousands of years. Uh, modern exploration of the
area depended heavily on maritime transportation of resources and people.
There were no planes, there was any air travel, and
(08:32):
the brutal realities of overland crossing. Even now with modern
roads and the internal combustion engine, even even now it's
still difficult. But back then you would be naturally limited
to how much you could take by like traveling by
foot or traveling by sled, what have you. And you know,
(08:53):
also you have to have honest conversations with your fellow travelers,
like how much are we were willing to risk for this?
You know, is it is it worth it? Just the
way a year for a boat, uh, instead of you know,
just trying to get out there and hope we make
it back. This is is a crazy time. It's something
that a lot of people might find hard to understand,
(09:14):
but it was reality for many, many people for for
decades and decades and decades, and it's Uh. The town
itself is named after a guy named Nathaniel Portlock's a
sea captain maritime fur trader. He was active in the
area in the late seventeen hundreds, specifically seventeen eighty six.
They took that that's like the claim to fame, if
(09:37):
you want to call it that. And this originally started
out as purely a business town. It was a salmon
cannering and it later led to some other business operations,
some kind of more industrial manufacturing. There was a chro
might mining operation, and they named the site Chrome, I'm assuming,
which is also what the Google browser is named after. UM.
(09:58):
Probably not, but led to it really being a place
of note enough that a post office was established in
Portlock in ninete, but it would still be sometime twenty
plus years in fact, well a little less than twenty
years before it appeared on the U S Census, but
it was still listed as an unincorporated village with a
(10:21):
population of thirty one, which as we know, is not
quite accurate. UM. But most of the town's history UH
consisted of a population that was largely made up of
Russian um expats and Allouits, which would be what in
the indigenous kind of tribal folk of that area of
that region. And there's a really interesting history in this
(10:44):
entire area of these Russian allout schools. Uh, that's it's
not necessarily stuff they don't want you to know, at
least to my mind right now, but fascinating history. Recommend
you look into that if you have some time for yourself. Yeah,
I believe that was a territorial school in the area
at the time and in that population. Makes sense because uh,
(11:08):
the the value it. We're already there, as were the
other indigenous people, and again had been there for a
very very very long time, and then Russian travelers, Russian
explorers were the closest other people who could get there,
So it makes sense that they would show at first
if we were all to travel there now you listening today,
(11:29):
and and the stuff they don't want you to know, Gang,
we would see little more than ruins. There's an old
mining tunnel and some rusted cannery equipment, sad skeletal remains
of houses. It's all being slowly eaten away by nature.
But there's a legend about this town, and it's a
place some locals don't like to visit. You see. Around
(11:52):
nineteen nine people started leaving in droves on mass By
nineteen fifty, that post office Noel mentioned had closed and
this effectively brought an end to port Lock, Alaska. So
what happened Here's where it gets crazy. We're already here. Yeah,
well we've got there's a lot of stuff going on.
(12:14):
So for many people in the area, port Locks mysterious
depopulation is not just a sad story of gentrification or
failing business. It's the story of a monster. And what
we'd like to do with you now, folks, is share
the story as it's generally presented. So gather around with
us in your mental camp fire. Get a little closer
(12:36):
to the flame, not just for the heat, but for
the light, because there's darkness all around us. A few
years after the establishments of this salmon cannery, people began disappearing.
And you can read about this story if you want
to see the full thing, in places like Alaska Magazine
and in Today's Alaska a couple other places. So if
(12:59):
you want to find your own sources, go ahead up
and head out there, and you'll read very much the
same stories that we're about to tell you here, and then, uh,
later on, we'll also tell you the primary source that
they're all exactly. But here, let's tell the story. As
you said, Ben, there are many. There are several people
that met untimely deaths out in Port Lock, at least
(13:24):
according to the stories or disappearances or disappearances sometimes mangled bodies.
Who knows. But there's a person named Andrew Camlock who
was said to have gone out logging in nineteen thirty one,
and he was discovered dead from a blow to his head,
and there was some logging equipment found near him that
(13:47):
may or may not have been part of his death. Sure,
I mean, there's plenty of accidents that can befall you
in situations like that, we're working with heavy machinery or
heavy equipment UM, or even just you know, having to
climb and maybe take a fall. So there's certainly other explanations.
But then we get into Tom Larson. Tom Larson went
(14:08):
out to also chop wood, maybe less of an industrial thing,
more just like you know, splitting logs um. And he
claims to have seen something quote large and hairy um
on the beach. So he went back to his house
and he got his rifle, uh, and he found this
this creature to still be kind of lurking around the
area when he got back, and they got into a
(14:29):
bit of us staring competition. Uh, and Larson did not
did not shoot at the time. UM, and so in
according to some of those stories, they all posit he
doesn't know why he didn't pull the trigger, right, because
a lot of that is copy pasted to be candid.
And the UH, one thing that maybe the more skeptical
(14:51):
in the crowd would know to already at this point
is the following. And I'm fine to say it. I
know it's it's cold, but it's true. People are very
good at dying. It's the one thing every person successfully
does at some point. So, UH, we have to what
we have to endeavor to stick to what what we know.
(15:13):
There's a lot of speculation surrounding came look, and there
are a lot of speculation surrounding these other incidents, like
hunters tracking a moose who found that something else appeared
to be tracking the same creature, something that left eighteen
inch human like or primate like footprints. Side note, if
you have been tracking stuff through snowy whether you know that, uh,
(15:37):
depending on the climate at the time and how much
time has passed, Uh, those footprints kind of road and
look larger than they originally were. And either way, these
hunters came across a flattened spot in the brush, and
that's where they believe this large animal this way for
it big footed animal didn't just kill a moose, but
(15:59):
was large enough and powerful enough to pick the carcass
up and carry it away. If you have ever seen
a moose that is terrifying. It is, and I mean
they're you know there. This is the kind of thing
that is the stuff of legends. So you're gonna get
different accounts of this and people adding their own details.
But I've certainly heard versions of the story where it
looked like some sort of you know, melee had taken
(16:20):
place between these animals or or whatever the other thing was,
and that there was there were signs of blood even
in in the snow and on the on the brush. Yes.
And then there's one little other thing that gets added
sometimes that they followed the footprints until they vanished. They
began to vanish into the fog as they went up
(16:42):
a mountain, and that's why, according to legend, locals will
still tell you to avoid the area on a foggy day.
There's also stories of people like a gold miner from
nearby Port Graham. It's different ports, not Port Chadaman's Port
Graham who one day went off to the mines or
when off to look for gold and never returned. You
(17:02):
also hear again numerous reports of mutilated bodies being found
as cannary employees disappeared into the hills and the wilderness,
only to wash up later in nearby streams. In many
of these cases, as you can probably already ascertain right
the events have been embellished online or by fringe researchers
(17:24):
who often are putting a good story over solid facts.
Sometimes they will do what I what we sometimes call
the Ancient Aliens thing, and this is where they'll relay
the stuff they've read from whatever source they found, and
almost all of it ultimately comes from as we'll see,
a really small collection of sources, and then they'll pose
(17:47):
their own embellishments, not as statements, but in a little
bit more weasily way as questions. Is like, so if
you've seen an episode of Ancient Aliens and they'll say
something like the stone work and the masonry of Machu
Picchu remains unexplainable by modern standards. What if they had helped,
what if there was some other civilization at play? Where
(18:11):
did they come from could it be related to the
stories of Atlantis or other ancient incredibly advanced civilizations. Could
it be Aliens? Cut to commercial and we're back. We
really did it. We did the we did the move
(18:33):
Commercial African already right. For for those of us who
were fascinated by cryptids or by the concept of cryptids,
this feels like it has all the ingredients of a lurid,
perfect monster story. And that's why if you, like us,
started reading about port Lock on various internet forums today
(18:55):
or in books about Sasquatch or Bigfoot, you'll a lot
of people claim, Hey, something like Bigfoot was active in
this area, was responsible for these attacks. But it's tough because,
you know, when you go back to primary sources, aside
from the one witness who survived Larson, it doesn't seem
(19:17):
like a lot of other people made it to the
other side of these encounters. And that would seem oddly
aggressive for Sasquatch, which is, you know, basically the world's
reigning hide and seek champion if it exists, I mean,
it's famously reclusive like a lot of other large fauta.
You know, bears are not bears don't wake up excited
(19:37):
to come see you. They don't know why you're around,
and it's irritating and confusing and frightening to them. And
we can assume the same could be said of a
lot of other large animals, um except for you know,
some of the big cats and hippos, uh and crocodiles.
Those creatures will actively hunt you. I just had an
(19:59):
image just being hunted the alligators specifically. Okay, push that
out of my mind. Oh sorry, nile crocodiles will actively
stock people. Okay, they don't care, they do not care.
But but it's I mean, it's interesting because I forgot
to mention this. Like I thought I had never heard
(20:20):
of port Lock, but I believe I have heard a
fictionalized version of it. Fictionalized in that it doesn't it
doesn't purport to be true. It's a horror story called
The Men from Poor Lock, which is by excellent writer
named Laird Baron. If you enjoy horror, then do check
out his short stories. And you know, have a source
of light nearby if you're easily spooked. Do we know
(20:43):
do we know roughly when that was published or like
the era? You know, I'd have to I'd have to
go back and check, Matt. Yeah, it couldn't have been
too long ago. I believe it was in maybe this
uh anthology that comes out every year called Best Horror
of the Year. That might be it um edited by
(21:03):
someone Ellen Datlow. So pretty confident it came out after right, Oh, yes, yes,
very much. The laird Baron is alive. He was not
writing this in or anything like that. So, which will
make sense when you see how the legend builds. So
you'll see books with titles like Abandoned the History and
(21:24):
Horror of Port Chadom, Alaska, and they lean into this
idea that a monster attacked the town uh and ultimately
drove everyone out, but they don't dig into a lot
of the context or details there. And you know that's
not a ding on the book. That's that's the choice
these these authors made, and I believe in the case
(21:46):
of in the case of Abandoned, there's also a video, right,
there's a video piece of people hunting or attempting to
find uh, something like bigfoot in the area. Oh, there's
a whole special you can find titled in Search of
the Port Chatham harry Man. That's the one. Yeah, is
is that with Leonard nimoy h Nope, it's not in
(22:09):
search of Colin. It's just called that I misunderstood. I
was gonna be like, he's not that Harry. No, No,
This one, uh was directed by Josiah Martin and written
by Larry Baxter, and it features what's his name, Stephen T.
Major person you may may or may not recognize, may not? Okay, Oh, yes,
(22:36):
Larry Beans Baxter. That's the people call him beans. That's true.
I was, yes, I was reading about him. But but like,
here's here's the question, and we'll get into monsters just
a second. But for now, it's important to remember that
a lot of people immediately shut down when they hear
this sort of explanation. For many people, many people listening
(22:59):
to the show to a the concept of a violent
human like creature a bigfoot fighting back against mankind's encroachment,
or would it be gentrification at that point, I don't know, unclear.
I guess it depends on how close those are the
human It's a nonstarter, right, people are saying these things
(23:20):
don't exist, therefore they could not be a reasonable explanation.
But either way, wherever you find yourself on the skepticism scale,
the fact of the matter is that Port Lock, Alaska
is abandoned, and for one reason or another, the town
shut down completely, which means that something had to happen.
(23:40):
And if you dig into the stories about the town's demise,
you see that you can trace the sources. Many of
the lurid tales of the disappearances and the purported deaths
come from a single author, primarily an article written by
Naomi cloudah in two thousand and nine for the Homer
(24:03):
Tribute and Brian Dunning over at Skepti, which of course
you can tell by the title is a source with
an angle. Dunning points out that cloud has work itself
hinges on two sources, and one of those is an
article that she also wrote way back in three for
a different outfit, the Anchorage Daily News. So she's taking
(24:25):
some of that information from the seventies and carrying it
on to this two thousand nine article, which you can
read in full online. And I believe you can find
the text of the full nineteen seventy three article uh
in in the archive at an Alaskan library. I can't
remember which one, and I'll just tell you the easiest
way to find the article that was later written based
(24:47):
off that. I had to go to the way back
Machine on archive dot org and you I searched for
Homer Tribune and her name Naomi Clouda, and you can
find it. The artic is titled Port Chatham Left to
Spirits and that's spelled c H A t h A
m H Holy One. So the second source is a
(25:10):
little more interesting, I think, because it's closer to the
actual events. A couple of people who grew up in
Port Lock survived and they moved with their families to
Port Graham, and they were living in Port Gram at
the time that they were interviewed by Clouda, and they
were interviewed through a translator. These interviewees are the inspiration
(25:34):
for Clouda's speculation on the cryptic angle. It's also fair
to assume that while they might be the only people interviewed,
they were sharing a belief that was not uncommon for
folks at the time and possibly as has been reported
in the modern day. Let's focus on one of the interviewees,
Melania helen Kell. She talked about those now typical tales
(25:58):
disappearance and death. This was regional folklore by this point,
and it's something that Clouda was well aware of, but
Kel was able to do something pretty significant. She added
specific details. She was the person who would say, oh,
you know that logger, his name was, for instance, Andrew
Camlock or something like that. And when she was talking
(26:19):
about this stuff, she and some other people are the
ones who introduced the idea of supernatural involvement of a
local supernatural entity, something called the non t knock in
a N T I I and a Q. It's to
make it feel a little more like a spelling exactly.
(26:41):
And then you know, this is something that would have
been from the lore of of of the indigenous people.
I mean, so it's interesting to have that detail. And
not only is this a cryptid type bigfoot creature that
you know, has corporeal personification, I guess in this you know,
um potentially violent um animal for lack of a better term.
(27:04):
It's meant to also be sort of a spiritual deity,
like a demon of some sort, like some kind of
malevolent force um. And they believed, according to kell Uh,
that this was some kind of curse that was escalating
and it was just going to keep getting worse and
worse and no worse, and these patterns they were seeing,
we're just going to continue until something was done about it,
(27:28):
or until they just you know, said hey, we're out
of here. Yeah, so she said. Kell says that this
was this creature was the reason her parents that they
had to leave town. They said, look, there's an escalating
pattern of attacks, honey, that's why we're leaving. But we're
not going far. We're just going over to the next
port town. And it really isn't that far from from
(27:52):
where they were living. So it's weird to think that,
you know, we're we're under attack here in this very
pacific place. But if we just travel a little bit
over the land or around, you know, from this port,
just around to this other port, will be fine. Um,
it's weird to imagine that. So in my mind when
(28:15):
I think about it, I think of a territorial animal
that that you know, lives in a very specific place.
It's not like there are a bunch of these nonto knocks,
you know, living all around the area the way you know,
I guess I don't know why I'm thinking squirrel populations,
but like wolves or or anything you may find out
there in the wilderness of Alaska. Uh, it's more of
(28:38):
a like a family or a single thing that lives
in one spot. Right. Yeah, it's an important point because
it's supposed to. If we're talking about something that's a
supernatural entity, then it is completely possible for it to
be very long lived, perhaps immortal, right, And it is
(28:59):
possible for it to be a single thing. So that's
why you don't see a lot of questions about what
would the active range of this creature be, what would
it scat look like, where would it nest, how would
it reproduce? Anyhow? This sounds like big news. Everybody in
towd left because there's a monster that is killing people
(29:20):
and mutilating them. If these attacks were happening multiple times
over a period of years, and they were indeed escalating,
culminating in this exodus from nineteen fifty or so, uh,
multiple papers of the date would have probably mentioned it, right,
Probably that would have been a way to sell papers,
(29:40):
one would think. I mean, if it bleeds, it leads,
and there was blood all over the snow of of
port Lock, right. Um. I don't know if we mentioned this,
but these injuries, I mean, at least according to many
of these primary sources, which can get deluded in the
retelling you know of of this tale. These injuries weren't
typical injury us that you'd see, you know, done by
(30:01):
like a bear attack or a wolverine attack or something.
These were much more grizzly and like, you know, like
essentially being almost mutilated and torn limb from limb in
some kind of borderline ritualistic way. At least that's what
that's what people the modern day are saying, right if you.
The thing is to the point about the idea that
(30:23):
multiple papers would be highly incentivized to write about this,
not even not even just for money. Let's not be
entirely cynical about this. Papers were a way to warn
people and help them, so there would be an ethical
journalistic responsibility arguably to spread word of this. But the
thing is they don't. The Library of Congress has hundreds
(30:47):
of thousands of archived records from newspapers in Alaska dating
all the way back to the late seventeen hundreds to
the time of Nathaniel Portlock himself, and some of these
stories who actually mentioned this tiny town of Portlock. And
when they mentioned this tiny town of Portlock, they talk
about the business there, which is why the town existed.
(31:08):
They talked about stuff like fishing and the canary, and
maybe a little bit about mining chro might They do
not mention anything about a rash of unexplained to deaths,
disappearances and mutilations the ones because they don't want to.
They don't want to scare people away from the canary. Dude,
the salmon is still there. I mean, that's not that's
(31:30):
not far off from what could possibly be the case.
I mean, they depended on this for their very existence
and sustenance, and they had this industry that if no
one will work, the industry fizzles, and it already was
a very very small, you know, industry to begin with. Yeah,
and that's a good point, and a counterpoint to that
would be that the more powerful newspapers of the time
(31:50):
would not have been affected by that town getting bad press.
They would have benefited from it. So but but either way,
the fact is it didn't get reported. Was it a
cover up? Was it because in their mind there was
nothing to report. We'll leave the we'll leave the ultimate
answer to you folks, as always. But what we did
(32:13):
find is that there was a story about crime. There's
one hilarious story about crime, and it's about the postmaster.
Because remember we said the post office started, which really
put a stample legitimacy on the town. The guy at
the time, the postmaster, George Hank, was arrested by g
men got caught with a gallon of moonshine. No Sasquatch
(32:37):
was believed to be involved. Yeah, but maybe George and
some other folks were dealing in some serious moonshine production
out there somewhere and it was organized and what you
could even call them organized criminals. Wait, wait a second, now,
I'm just joking. That's that's my speculation and like coming
(32:58):
up with ideas because I have this one at just
an example. Uh So, like as and disappearances, did Good reported,
there was one reported in nineteen twenty, and then later
before then there was a report of a boat being
found in nineteen seventeen. And the boat that washed ashore
(33:22):
and Port Luck was the same kind of boat that
these two hunters had set off on from Seward, Alaska
before they disappeared. You know, it's kind of like saying,
Paul and Nol leave on a road trip to the Southwest,
and they were leaving in a Ford Mustang, and then
(33:44):
later in Texas someone found a Ford Mustang and you
guys disappeared. Yeah, yeah, that's something we would do. So
it doesn't explain you know what I mean, It doesn't
directly link anybody. So this is so that's the reporting
you can find from the day that seems to be
(34:04):
largely like the fact based documentation of that time. That
doesn't mean these things didn't happen, but it does definitely
mean the people that we're supposed to be reporting on
these for some reason to die. Yeah. No, I agree.
It is weird that there's nothing written there and we've like,
we can't stress that enough. It is weird, and if
(34:26):
there was something really going on that is weird. I
want to talk specifically about this creature, this Nanto Knock
whatever or non to Knock whatever that thing is, because
some of the attacks, some of the lore that's been
generated around this thing doesn't feel so much like a
(34:46):
big Foot to me. It feels more like stuff I've
read about a different legendary creature, a when to Go
and and I know there's some similarities here, but whend
it goes a very different creature. I just wonder if
there if we found anything that shows Bigfoot maybe wasn't
the original culprit or the original legendary creature that. Yeah, yeah,
(35:12):
that's a great question. So let's go back to the monsters.
What exactly is a non to know? It is originally
not a big foot. It comes from a dialect that
is extant on the Kenai Peninsula and the the languages
here are rich and diverse. There are a ton of
different languages. This word itself, none to know seems to
(35:35):
be a loanword from another language. So the original word
would be something like nontina, which means literally those who
steal people. And there's not a connection to cannibalism right
the way there is often with the wind to go.
This thing was more like a boogeyman, more like a
(35:57):
thing you would tell your kids about to make sure
they didn't go outside, like like a bamba duke in
a situation. Uh well, it reminds you maybe tales of
witches in you know, the frontiers of the United States
as it's being settled in the mainland, where the tales
of witches where that they will steal you away basically
(36:19):
if you're a child. Um at least some of those
some of those tales were that. Yeah, and and a
lot of that's I mean, that's an oral tradition of
getting kids to bath right. Well, yeah, and just be
aware of of all the things that can harm you
if you're a small child, especially predators and real, real,
(36:39):
real animals. Yeah, whether you're talking about like El Coco
or the Sacman or the Aswang or whatever. The various
features of these creatures or entities may differ, but ultimately
the gist is there's something bad out there in the dark.
Stay inside and don't wander away, even if it's daytime.
(37:02):
If I can't keep an eye on you, you're doing
something bad, kid, and there will be consequences and I
have to chop all that would so we don't freeze
later this year, so I can't just look at you
the whole time. So yeah, this this thing did not
the description of it did not originally fit what we
understand to be the description of Bigfoot. But over the
(37:25):
decades since this incident, various authors have conflated the two concepts.
So now people will understandably but incorrectly assume non is
another word for sasquatch, which it is not. And the
question of whether these authors made this conflation as an
honest error or whether they did it as a purposeful
(37:48):
embellishment is a little tougher to determine. You'd have to
go to each person and figure it well. And I
know this, I know that Sasquatch. You know, myths often
associate them them having some sort of interdimensional powers where
they can, you know, move very quickly or do various
things that you might ascribe to a supernatural being or deity.
(38:09):
And to me, the non to not just takes that
a step further, like it's almost like a spiritual being
first and then like uh, embodiment of this creature second,
which is why I see where you're going with the
Windigo thing, Matt, because that's sort of very similar to
that where it's a malevolent spirit that is out to
cause havoc and uh, you know, wreck the lives of
(38:32):
those in its wake, you know. Yeah, And so we
see this transformation and this is common in folklore, right,
Myths com mingle and they speak with one another, so
well like the the issue, though, is Kell and other
locals at the times of interviews did seem adamant certain
(38:54):
that at least in their memory, this monster, this entity
was the reason the growing up of the time gave
for leaving Port Lock, Alaska. And as any parents know,
sometimes these stories you tell your children aren't the hard
facts of a given situation, right you kind of explain
it through what feels like the most efficient, comfortable frame
(39:16):
of reference for that young mind. But there are some
other details I've found regarding the story of Kell's interview.
So I mentioned earlier that there was a translator for
this interview. Believe that translator's name is Sally Ash, and
(39:38):
Sally was able to speak multiple languages, so she was
and she was a cousin of Kell's. She said that
she said that according to the true belief system of
the people, the non to Nook is not like a sasquatch,
(39:59):
more of a as we've described, a supernatural being. And
the idea was that they were reclusive, they didn't really
want to hang out with people. They had been cited,
but they were not trying to run up on you, essentially.
And then for this for this interview for the Homer Tribune,
(40:22):
the one that you know blew up the story. It
seemed that Sally Ash wants to clear the air about
this controversy, and there's a great article about this in
the Anchorage Press. She said that she She said that
this story was kind of manufactured, or at the very
least purposely embellished by Kell, because Kel was getting so
(40:46):
tired of people always asking her whether the story was true,
so she made she spun a tale around a campfire,
And Sally says that my sisters, my cousins, and I
all were there while this was happening, and we didn't
want her to get mad at us, so we don't
want to be disrespectful to her. But later we would
(41:09):
all have a laugh about this. So even this interview
gets called into question later. Still, given that we know
something definitely happened, and given that the stories seem at
least some of the stories hopelessly exaggerated, unprovable, or muddled together,
already becoming a piece of folklore, it's fair to say
there's a missing piece of the puzzle here. What could
(41:31):
it be? At this point? Unless we all go camping
in port Lock, we'll have to make our best guests.
For now. Let's let's get our sleeping bags just in
our rooms here and take a quicknap while we listen
to these ads. And we've returned, let's search for some answers.
(41:53):
Uh Okay, First, make no mistake. As we said at
the top, Alaska was and is a dangers place. Even now,
even if you were in the capital, you can look
out on the horizon and you will have a palpable
sense of being at the edge of the frontier. Even
though Alaska is sparsely populated. Pulled some statistics that might
(42:14):
be interesting. It has the highest rate of missing persons
in the nation. California has the highest number of absolute
missing persons, but Alaska has the highest rate of missing persons.
For every ten thousand people, forty one point eight will
become missing persons. Oh boy, we need we need to
(42:35):
We need to get our missing four one one guy
over here again. Serious. Yeah, this is a lot of
missing people. Okay, that's pretty disturbing. And we talked about
it before. It's about the environment itself, right, It's about
when you need something you may not be able to
get it, like a man made tool or a man
(42:57):
made vehicle or something like that. You may not be
able to use a vehicle. And even in you know,
with the scant kind of infrastructure that they would have
had in this sort of settlement type situation, you know,
back before there was modern technology and stuff that certainly
could make living in Alaska at least a little more
tolerable and less utterly terrifying and dangerous. I mean, it's
(43:22):
not out of the realm of possibility that this number
of disappearances might have happened just organically from like going
out into the wilds and taking a fall, you know,
or because a lot of I believe a lot of
these bodies were discovered in lagoon in a lagoon after
washing down from various rivers that were like higher up
in elevation. So I mean, you know, again, this the
(43:44):
mangling and all of that. We don't have firsthand accounts
or or or images of this, and this is a
lot of this is hearsay are possibly like a way
to explain why are so many people dying, But you
really could just explain it by saying, yeah, it's because
it's a harsh environment. Um, that is a very scary
place to live, and there's many, many, many ways to die.
Like you said, Ben, that's something that human beings are
(44:06):
great at doing, from way back when the first humans
were there two right now, the cold is one of
the biggest things you got to worry about. And if
you are not fully prepared and experienced to go through
cold weather like that, especially if you're on foot, then
it's over and and you're just lost for a while
(44:26):
until your body shows up. And when you are, when
you are in a place without infrastructure support easy access
to medical care, something as small as a broken ankle
can spell the end of your story. You have to
be very careful. So just imagine how much more common
(44:46):
this is back in the day. There's no GPS, there's
no satellite communication, there's someone who's expecting you in a
month or so, so the stakes are high. And secondly,
even now, towns across north of across Canada, the US, Mexico,
and towns across the world only exists when it makes
sense for people to live there. So odds are if
(45:09):
you are listening in the US right now, you are
maybe maybe a day or two, maybe three days away
by a car from an abandoned site near you. And
many ghost towns become depopulated when they're no longer relevant
on trade routes or when the industries they depended on
were no longer relevant to the larger economy. Is why
(45:32):
you see towns across the States that were abandoned when
new railroad lines by passed them, right, and now now
the horse and carriage trade that they depended on is
all going by rail miles and miles north, or miles
and miles south and west, or what have you. This
is also why when you see a new stretch of
(45:53):
interstate passing through a different town, people from the town
that was no longer convenient by the interstate would tend
to move. There would be brain drain, there would be
population drain. And with this in mind, it's quite possible
that the real murderer of port Lock, Alaska may have
been something as simple and as ruthless as progress, that
(46:16):
dastardly progress. I can see this making sense, especially when
you consider what really did happen in the nineteen forties,
because we're talking about like immediately post World War two,
right when the mass exodus occurred, or when the last
people left port Lock, and there's a little coincidence here,
(46:37):
and or just something that happened around the same time.
Alaska Route one ZA Highway was built during the nineteen forties,
and it legitimately fundamentally changed the transportation routes, the game,
the who the whole game of transportation, very very much
so because there's like we mentioned, there's so many ports
(47:00):
in that area ports something brothers. Right, that's because overland travel,
when you're talking about moving weight what it was dangerous,
It was risky, and it was at times unreliable. So
now you have a way to most more safely transport
(47:20):
goods in bulk over land. This means you don't need
as many ships. This means also you don't need as
many ports. And if you live in a town that,
like Portlock, is not accessible from this new roadway from
Alaska Route one, then things are starting to look economically
grim because you've got so if you look at the
(47:41):
map of the peninsula, like matt Side at the top,
what you can see is that Portlock is at the
southern tip, kind of um trending a little bit towards
the western side. And if you look at the way
that Alaska Route one is built, it's on the other
side of that peninsa Youla, it's on the opposite side,
(48:02):
and Port Graham is on the other side of that
peninsula where there are stories of people moving directly from
Portlock to Graham. Right. So in this in this way,
people of port luck we're luckier than some other towns
because they could move and they didn't have to move
too far away. When they moved, they were still close
enough to maintain their lifestyles, their family connections right their communities,
(48:26):
their friends, and they were able to relocate their businesses.
And in fact, there's pretty solid argument to be made
that their businesses would have thrived because of their access
to this new trade route through Route one. So it's
possible then that people like kills parents just told her
a story they thought a kid would understand instead of
(48:48):
walking her through the ins and outs of local economics. Unfortunately,
it looks like the very same person who translated that
story is telling us that it was little more than
a tall tail or a prank. Unfortunately, we'll never know,
as the parents themselves were not interviewed. It's hard with
this kind of stuff because so much of it is
(49:08):
wrapped up in superstition, uh and wrapped up in this
very very harsh existence and this kind of you know,
combination of these indigenous tales and folks that are, you know,
very superstitious, so you get these versions of the story
that really lean into the Oh. But the mutilations were
made by some some hell fire creature that couldn't possibly
(49:30):
walk the earth. Um, you know that we know of
and really muddies the waters. But um, there is the
idea that port Lock simply because again of the nature
of the size of it and the remoteness of it,
that it just became less economically viable. Um. And that's
something that certainly could be leaned into by the skeptical crowd.
(49:52):
But it's still is a place that locals tend to
avoid there even I mean, there are other, uh, superstitious
tales wrapped up in this. I wasn't able to find
a direct primary source, but there are you know, people
who describe the area as haunted and and as of
seeing apparitions and other kind of spooky stuff. Uh not
just you know, a limb from limb tearing monster. Um.
(50:16):
So you can explain this stuff away all you want.
For superstitious people remain superstitious, especially if they're part of
generations of this kind of superstitious storytelling. Yeah. Yeah, people
in Seldovia, Port Graham and other places called non walect
also will You'll find people there saying that the area
(50:37):
is haunted. But with that, you know, you could say
you could say that about a lot of places. Honestly,
you you can go at almost any reach in the
world and you'll see a lot of people who say
this part of I don't even know if I believe
in ghosts, but that abandoned asylum, right, not gonna not
gonna catch me there fully haunted. But but you know,
(51:00):
and they always say, it's of the the people who
died in these mysterious ways. They're the ones that actually
haunt it. Um, not the spirit itself or the creature. Right.
And in this and in that case, you have to
ask how much of that has been generated purposely by
mass media, you know. Um. But but the local aspects,
(51:21):
the regional folklore is true, and there are people possibly
listening with us to the show today who have personally
encountered these tales. We we would love to hear from you.
It's it's also possible that people, of course, most people
don't want to seem credulous or silly or superstitious, so
(51:42):
these beliefs or this discomfort might be something that keep
largely to themselves, to their close friends or their confidants.
You know, It's not something that you start a blog about.
And at the same time, it's possible that various crypto
zoologists and bigfoot hunters exploring the area are whether or
consciously or unconsciously, prioritizing beliefs that support their own hope,
(52:06):
the hope that something exists out there on the edge
of civilization, something both powerful and territorial, more than capable
of pushing humanity back from the edges of the map.
If there were something like this, Alaska is not a
bad candidate as a place for it to call home.
I mean again, if you've seen a moose up close,
(52:28):
but yeah, just a moose, Yeah, and you just go
pick it up and take it with you back up
a mountain. But I'm not going to discount the possibility
that perhaps something exists out there in the peaks, in
the valleys, in the woods, maybe in a cave system.
(52:50):
Something might be out there. I'm just I'm not gonna
say it does I well, I'm gonna say it likely
doesn't exist. But I'm one of those people, man, I
think you might be too, that hopes something is out there. Yeah.
We just don't like poke it. You know, if lots
up on you because I want to poke it, let's go.
(53:11):
I think it's a really bad idea. Matt like you
like those arms? You like those arms? No, okay, because
it will probably rip them from your body. I just
want to make friends and have tea. I gotta have
arms and team at I just want to see as
much as possible, you know what I mean, before the
(53:34):
last sunsets or the last star goes out, or however
you wanna wax poetic about the very end of the
brief candle and all that, right, yeah, etcetera, etcetera. Burn
bright friends. So with this in mind, we pass the
torch to you. Let us know if you have ever
been fortunate enough to explore port Lock, Alaska for yourself,
(53:57):
let us know what you saw. Let us know what
other stories you have heard, whether you think they have
some sand and it doesn't have to be in Alaska.
Every every remote place has some sort of cryptic story.
Whether you're talking about the Mongolian deathworm, whether you're talking
about the abominable snowman or the yety there are. There
(54:21):
are a wealth of stories. Some that are treated just
like tall tales, some that are treated as as realistically
as you would treat another wild animal and the threat
it poses in the wild. We can't wait to hear
from you. We try to make it easy to find
us online, and UH will also the places we're about
(54:43):
to tell you about online are also where you can
find pictures if we ever make it to Port Look,
Alaska and more importantly make it back. That's right. You
can find us on the usual internet places of note.
We are conspiracy stuff on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, conspiracy
stuff show on Instagram. Yes, and we a phone number.
You can call it. It's one eight three three s
(55:03):
t d W y t K. You can leave a
voicemail oh yeah, for three minutes up to three minutes.
And when you do call in, please give yourself a
cool nickname, whatever you'd like to be called. Leave your
message and UH. If you've got anything personal to say
to us or the super producers that work with us,
say it right at the end. That's perfect. Just do
(55:24):
it just like that. If three minutes is not enough
time to say everything you want to say, we highly
recommend you instead send us a good old fashioned email.
We are conspiracy at i heart radio dot com. Stuff
(55:56):
they don't want you to know is a production of
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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