November 14, 2025 • 31 mins
Deep in Alaska, in the ghost town of Portlock, villagers once whispered of something colossal stalking the fog—an unseen presence that is said to have left shredded camps and vanished men in its wake. Decades later, the forest is silent, but the stories have never gone away...
Written by Diane Hope and Richard MacLean Smith
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
From the day the men arrived at the remote beach
on the Cook Inlet on the southern coast of Alaska,
they felt a pervasive sense of unease.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
One of the men, a normally.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Fit and healthy individual, felt nauseous and then vomited for
no apparent reason. Then, after they began exploring the area,
a few of the men came across a large stone
column set back from the shore among the trees. They
called it the Obelisk. After waving for the others to
(00:45):
come and see it too, another member of the team
approached it, only to find himself feeling suddenly overcome with
a strange, unpleasant feeling. It felt to him, he said,
like there was an evil energy emanating directly from it.
Then he staggered back a few paces and vomited. Two
(01:08):
The men were an expeditionary team who had been sent
by the Discovery Channel in twenty twenty one along with
the film crew, to see if the location of an
abandoned settlement situated on the inlet was safe to live in.
Home to Indigenous people and white settlers. The settlement had
been abandoned decades before under mysterious and some say frightening circumstances.
(01:34):
On the investigation team was Ashnaderhoff, Keithserville, Noah Craig, DJ Brewster,
and Kyle McDowell. They were assisted by two locals, Tommy
Evans and Frank Berestov, both descendants of former villagers. One
precaution the men took soon after they arrived was to
(01:58):
set up camp in an open air close to the beach,
a good distance from the treeline of a dense forest
that stretched for miles inland, because they'd been told by
historian Jeff Davis and local elders that the reason the
village had been abandoned decades earlier was due to something
(02:18):
monstrous that was said to lurk within the surrounding trees.
Over the next few days, the team, with a camera
crew in toe, set up cameras in the forest and
took video footage along with the audio recordings, exploring.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
The area around their camp.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
The settlement had once been an active fishing community with
a canning factory where the abundant fish caught from the
local waters had been processed, packaged, and exported. As they
searched an area far into the trees, the documentary team
found large pieces of old machinery from the factory in
(02:57):
odd places, lying unusual angles, as if they'd somehow been
thrown there by something with superhuman strength. But it wasn't
only physical evidence that began to spook the team. As
the days went by, even those who had originally been
skeptical of the stories about the location's dark history began
(03:20):
to feel as if they were being watched, convinced that
a malevolent presence was steadily closing in on them. You're
listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard McLean Smith. The former
(03:42):
settlement of Port Locke was located on the Lower Cook Inlet,
around two hundred miles south of Anchorage, at the far
tip of Alaska's Kenney Peninsula, not far along the coast
from the present day towns of Homer and Seldovia. The
area has been home to the so Piac people for centuries.
There's a nearby village inhabited mostly by Sugbiak along with
(04:06):
Russian settlers, called nan Wallach, which means place by the Lagoon,
and it has the reputation for being the creepiest place
in Alaska. Often referred to by locals as Port Chatham
rather than Port lock. The abandoned settlement is on private
property owned by the English Bay Corporation, who restrict access
(04:30):
to the area. There were no indications of anything strange
when in July seventeen eighty six British naval Captain Nathaniel
port Lock sailed up the Cook Inlet looking for a
safe place to anchor and reprovision his ship. Captain port
Lock had been appointed to command the merchant vessel the
(04:52):
King George just the year before by the King George's
Sound Company, of which he was a partner. Port Lock
kept meticulous notes about his extensive travels, which he published
in his elaborately titled seventeen eighty nine book, A Voyage
round the World, but more particularly to the Northwest Coast
(05:12):
of America. In these detailed records, he describes finding a
sheltered bay off the inlet, clearly not a modest man.
There's a sketch of it in the book, already bearing
the assumed name port Lock's Harbor, where the ship's crew
spent several days gathering provisions. The observant captain recorded that
(05:35):
some of the local people lived in temporary shelters made
of sticks and bark During the summer. They ate a
diet comprised mostly of fish supplemented by the dried inner
rind of pine bark, as well as hemlock and angelica roots,
plants considered poisonous by Europeans, but the locals seemed to
(05:56):
have adapted to the toxins and apparently a them without
any problem. One Internet blogger claims that six years before
port Lock arrived, explorers from Spain had visited the exact
same area but had fallen sick, some had even died,
while the remainder were haunted by strange, terrifying cries they
(06:20):
heard in the night. The cries started far off in
the mountains, but over time seemed to edge down through
the forest, getting closer towards them. The blogger also stated
that when port Lock's crew surveyed the land around the
bay that would later bear their captain's name, they found
(06:42):
the remnants of an abandoned native village. They wandered openly
why such a prime area full of game fish and
shellfish was now unsettled. Just then, some members of the
landing party grew sick and scared, and begged port Locke
to depart immediately, believing the area must have been cursed.
(07:06):
For what it's worth, port Lock's own accounts do not
appear to contain this sinister story, nor did he seem
to have been told any tales of what locals refer
to as the non Tenuck. But if he hadn't, he
would have been one of the few visitors to the
region who hadn't heard of it. The word non Tinuk,
(07:34):
found in the Chugach dialect of sugpiac Alutik, comes from
the Alaskan Native denar Ena word nantina, meaning those who
steal people. It describes a legendary monster with three toes
on each foot and six fingers on each hand, who
was woven into traditional tales as a way to scare
(07:57):
children into not wandering off into the world woods, though
some say it was never just a story. From the
late seventeen hundreds onwards, port Lock Sheltered Bay was settled
once again, first by native communities, later by fishermen, lumbermen,
and miners, nearly all of either Alaskan Native or Russian descent,
(08:22):
or those tales of the Nuntinuk remained firmly in the
folklore of the indigenous peoples. Some reports say that events
began to take a dark turn around eighteen sixty seven,
when a new community of nomadic Sugbiak set up a
camp on port Lock Bay, where they enjoyed the abundance
of seafood, But within a month they were apparently attacked
(08:47):
by what they described as cannibal giants, who raided their
encampment on an almost nightly basis. Tales tell of how
these giant, hairy, human like attackers fought with the wild savagery,
which the Sugbiak had never encountered before, and that although
the tribe fought back, the attacks would resume whenever game
(09:10):
animals became scarce in the area. Whatever the truth of
these stories, it is known that around the beginning of
the nineteen hundreds, the bountiful fish stocks attracted an American
company who brought in a fleet of commercial fishing boats
and built the Port Lock Cannery. The settlement grew quickly,
(09:31):
with accounts from the time describing a quaint and tidy
village nestled in a beautiful setting between the sea and
snow covered peaks. By nineteen twenty one, the town was
established enough to merit a United States Post office. The
seal of official township status records kept by the port
(09:52):
Lock Cannery management showed that early on the site had
been vacated. In nineteen o five, when the cannery ste
the supervisor noted that all the Native Alaskan workers promptly
left the area because of something in the forest. However,
the threat must have abaited, since the records also stated
(10:13):
that the workers returned the following year. But over the
subsequent years, rumors started to spread around the Kenai Peninsula
that weird things were happening at port Lock. It was
(10:37):
said that in the forest around port Lock, trees were
being completely ripped out of the ground, turned upside down,
and then thrust back into the earth, with the roots
facing up into the air. Locals began to speak of
a bigfoot like monster that was stalking the area their
very own non teanuck alarm, which creature said to walk
(11:01):
on two feet, had been seen around a Chromian mining
camp sixteen miles north of the town. It was also
said that citizens of port Lock began to experience a
series of strange disappearances and deaths. Sometime in the nineteen twenties,
a man named Albert Petka was said to have died
(11:23):
after receiving a fatal blow from a peculiar animal that
he was trying to scare off with his dogs. In
the nineteen thirties, a logger named Andrew Kamlock is claimed
to have died after being hit in the head by
a piece of logging equipment that would have taken the
strength of two or more large men to wield. When
(11:45):
the man's body was found, it was said that there
was blood on the equipment a good ten feet from
where he lay, as though someone or some think had
used the equipment in the attack and then tossed it aside.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Some reports also say.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
That Kamluck's dogs were found near by, torn to shreds
around the same time. According to Simyon Kvasnikoff, a resident
of present day nan Wallick, a gold miner also disappeared
after heading out for the day. No sign of him
was ever found. Another time, local man Tom Larsen was
(12:25):
said to have gone out chopping wood to make fish traps.
It was a calm, tranquil morning, with a faint mist
rising from the tree tops. Then Larsen sensed movement along
the shore. Looking up, he saw something large and hairy
on the beach. He ran back home and returned quickly
(12:46):
with his rifle. Racing down the beach to the water's edge,
he was alarmed to find the creature was still there.
It just stared at him, Larsen claimed later, and he
never could explain why he failed to fire at it,
but instead just watched as it slowly turned around, walked
(13:06):
up the beach, and disappeared into the trees. Over the
course of the next twenty years, as many as between
fifteen and thirty bodies were alleged to have turned up
in and around port Lock, along trails and on river banks,
some floating out.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Into the bay.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
It was rumored they'd been dismembered, the clothing ripped of shreds,
or more damage that bore no resemblance to wounds caused
by bears or wolves. One story of the apparent nantinook
(13:48):
stalking port Lock was that a group of hunters tracking
a moose through the local forest came across giant human
like tracks over eighteen inches long. As they closed in
on their prey, they reputedly found signs of an apparent
life and death struggle, where the grass had been matted
(14:08):
down over a wide area, as if disturbed by large animals.
From that point on, only one set of tracks emerged
deep enormous human like footprints that led up high into
the mist shrouded mountains. Twice, it was said, on the
foggiest of nights, something broke into the port Lock canning factory,
(14:32):
causing significant damage. Stories of other hauntings added to the
general atmosphere of terror. They included the specter of a
woman in a long black dress with a pale face,
who was said to appear from near by cliffs to
moan and scream before disappearing back into the rocky walls.
(14:55):
One season, its alleged that the cannery workers left town
for a second time, only agreeing to return the following year,
after the factory owners agreed to hire armored guards to
protect the camp around the clock. Then, in nineteen forty nine,
the town was completely abandoned. Many stories insist that, sick
(15:16):
and tired of living in fear of the ravages of
the Nanteinook, the locals fled, leaving many of their possessions behind.
Abandoned relics belonging to the previous residents can still be
found on the beach and in the woods to this day,
but tales of the Nanteinook do not end there. In
(15:38):
nineteen sixty eight, one hunter claimed to have been chased
by a strange creature while he was hunting in the area. Then,
in nineteen seventy three, three more hunters, beset by a
three day storm, were forced to take shelter in one
of Port Lock's abandoned buildings. On every night, they claimed
to hear something vast prowling round the cabin and what
(16:02):
sounded like two feet In nineteen ninety, a paramedic was
called out to attend to a seventy year old man
who'd suffered a heart attack while incarcerated in the Eagle
River Jail just north of Anchorage. While treating the man,
the paramedic happened to mention that he'd once hunted in
(16:23):
the area around Port Locke. At the mention of the word,
the elderly man instantly sat bolt upright and grabbed the
paramedic by the shirt.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Did it bother you? He said, with wild eyes. Did
you see it?
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Many of the stories about alleged attacks and sightings of
the nantinook come from an article written by journalist and
author Naomi Clouder published in The home A Tribune in
two thousand nine. From the article have been widely circulated
among crypto zoology websites ever since, further feeding the legend
(17:07):
of port Lock. But Clouder's article was based on just
two sources. The first was a nineteen seventy three report
in the Anchorage Daily News quoted in John Green's nineteen
seventy eight book Sasquatch, the Apes among Us. The piece
contains many of the buy now often retold stories of
(17:29):
alleged non Teinook attacks, but is very light on specific
details or corroborating evidence. The second source was an interview
with a pair of elderly Alaska Natives who grew up
in Port Lock. It's in these interviews that the name
non Teinuok becomes closely associated with port Lock.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
In print.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
One of the two elders, Milania Helen Kel, was born
in Port Locke in nineteen thirty four. She provided some
specific details, including the names of the men who supposedly
died or disappeared at the times of the alleged creature attacks.
Kel also insisted that her parents left Port Lock because
(18:12):
they could no longer put up with the constant attacks
of the Nantinook. Yet, despite these anecdotes, the archival news
reports from port Lock and its alter eager Port Chatham,
going back to its inception, are almost exclusively only about
commercial fishing, with the odd lumber and mining story peppered
(18:33):
in for good measure. In all those years, only a
single death from the settlement appears to have made it
into the papers, one man who was reported to have
died in an unspecified accident in nineteen twenty. Perhaps deaths
in the mining, lumbering and fishing industries, three highly dangerous
(18:54):
professions simply weren't thought to be newsworthy. Even so, only
one accidental death over several decades seems on the low
side for such a location. As for general crime, only
one was reported in the entire town's history, in nineteen
twenty four, when then port Lock postmaster one mister George
(19:18):
Henk was arrested by the Prohibition Enforcement Bureau for possessing
one gallon of moonshine. There was one case of missing
persons reported, however, that of two hunters, Ben Sweezey and
Bill Weaver, who left on a two week trip by
boat in nineteen seventeen and were never seen again. But
(19:39):
the men were from Steward, quite a distance down the coast,
and only mentioned in relation to Port Locke because a
boat that washed up there seemed to match the description
of the boat belonging to the missing men. In over
a quarter of a million pages from Alaskan newspaper reports
dating from the late seventeen high hundreds to nineteen sixty
(20:01):
three in the US Library of Congress, there seems to
be nothing as headline worthy as the killings and dismemberments
that are said to have occurred.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
In Port Lock.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Could it be that the demise of port Lock had
very little to do with the Nuntinook or any other
murderous Bigfoot type creature for that matter. In analyzing port
(20:34):
Lock's descent into becoming a ghost town, one fact stands out.
The completion of Alaska Route one, which was first open
to the public in nineteen forty eight. Running along the
opposite edge of the Kenai Peninsula, it allowed for much
more efficient travel between Anchorage and the many towns along
(20:56):
the peninsula. Towns that no longer needed to rely on
ship for their supplies, places inaccessible from the new highway,
like port Lock, suddenly had a significant part of their
livelihoods removed, much like towns along Route sixty six that
were bypassed by that famous interstate network in the nineteen
(21:16):
seventies and eighties. Furthermore, port Lock was much more remote
from the new Highway than Route sixty six towns ever were.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Even today, there is only a.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Single unpaved forest road within ten kilometers of the town
of Russian Alayut descent. Milania kiel As lived in the
nearby settlement of nan Walloch for most of her life.
Her ancestors were nomadic, moving from place to place with
the seasons, through the port Lock area and as far
(21:48):
afield as Homer and even Kodiak. To her, port Lock
was always a creepy place. As a kid, she was
told by adults to go out on foggy days because
that's when Nanteinuk were most likely to be walking around.
According to her, the creature is less a physical thing
(22:11):
and more a part human, part supernatural being. Her uncles
and grandfathers said that the Nantinuck had been alive for
a long time. They described it as tall and strong,
and liable to omit a noxious odor if you ever
got near to it, or so the story went. As
reported by the Homer Tribune back in two thousand and nine,
(22:35):
Milania's story was translated for the author of the article
by her younger cousin, Sally Ash. As she sat with Milania,
Sally got the distinct feeling that, tired of being asked
about Nantinuk and the abandonment of Portlock, her cousin simply
made up the story about how the creature was killing
(22:57):
people brought up to respect elders. Sally said that she
didn't feel able to correct her in front of the reporter,
but that the family had had a laugh about it later.
Sally suspects that the story might have been her elder
relative's way of trying to scare people away from an
area where family connections are deeply rooted and many generations
(23:20):
of ancestors lay buried. Nonetheless, if that had been the intention, sadly,
it only added to the allure of Portlock for a
whole new generation of crypto zoologists. Milania's explanation is also
not unusual among many Indigenous people who continue to believe
that creatures supposedly taking the form of the Nantinok, Sasquatch,
(23:46):
or Bigfoot are non physical beings. Some believe these creatures
live in another dimension but can appear in the physical
plane at will, and that they can be visible to
some people while at the same time remaining invisible to others.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
In the same group.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
They're often thought to be shapeshifters, disappearing or changing into
the form of a different creature if a human gets
too close, and if you try to shoot them, they'll
just pull the bullet from their bodies, completely unaffected by it.
(24:26):
Back on the cook Inlet in twenty twenty one, with
the Discovery Channel's exploration team, Nan Wallach, elder and local
historical expert Tommy Evans shared his own stories of strange
goings on around the.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Former settlement of Port Lock.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
One time, while he was walking along port Lock Beach
on a school trip, he heard people talking in a
native language he didn't understand, despite nobody else being around.
He also said that when a bear was in the vicinity,
the dogs didn't act too scared, but if it was
another thing, as he put it, the dogs became so
(25:05):
frightened they'd run straight to the owner's house to hide.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
A few nights.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Into their expedition, the documentary team was startled awake in
their tents by what sounded like a huge creature breathing
heavily as it prowled around their camp The following morning,
Convinced that they were close to encountering the nantinook, the
team set about putting cameras up in the trees to
(25:31):
try and capture the thing on film. As they set
to work cutting away some branches with an axe, they
claimed to hear knocking sounds coming back at them from
deeper within the forest. The knocking sounded like the axe
blodes they were making, and the pattern changed in rhythm
to mimic exactly.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
The sequence the team mate.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Around fifteen minutes of it was recorded, of which a
few were featured in the resulting TV show, Emboldened. The
team played these recordings of alleged bigfoot calls and wood
knocking over loud speakers into the forest, hoping to provoke
a response. Moments later, they were apparently spoot when something
(26:14):
they couldn't quite make out seemed to stir in the
surrounding foliage. Later that day, out in the forest, one
of the men was sure he'd heard a voice whisper
into his ear, despite no one being near him at
the time. That night, the team were woken suddenly again
from fitful sleep to loud crashing sounds outside their tents.
(26:38):
Scurrying outside to get a better look, the men shone
their flashlights out into the darkness, from where it appeared
something was hurling.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Rocks at them.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
They later claimed that the assault snapped the frame of
one of their tents in two, leaving them terrified. The
team's next step was to recruit bigfootspere specialist Ron Moorhead.
It was his belief that the men were being targeted
by the dark spirit of a nantinook, taking the form
of what he called a violent interdimensional being. A self
(27:14):
described psychic medium, Polyweerram was then brought in and invited
to try and make contact with whatever the being was.
After a short time exploring the area, she reported sensing
a dark and potentially deadly presence, then promptly left, but
for the self proclaimed demonologist James Sonia from the Alaska
(27:37):
Paranormal Response Crew, who was also brought in to help.
There was one thing the team needed to fear above
all else, the obelisk. When James Sonia arrived to join
the team, he took a moment to survey the eerily
(27:59):
remote location, taking in the still waters, the dark Sandy
Beach and the pine.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Covered hills beyond.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
But before long he found himself being drawn to the
strange stone pillar that had been discovered at the back
of the beach. Drawing closer, he claimed to sense a dark,
malicious energy emanating from it. It was clear to him
that a high class demon, as he put it, had
(28:28):
tied itself to the area and was feeding off the
obelisk's negative energy. They needed to perform an exorcism without delay,
and so James vied up his holy fog dispensing machine
that had been filled with holy water and infused with
rose and sage. Then steadily moving throughout the area, from
(28:51):
the obelisk to the team's camp and anywhere else they'd
sensed the apparent demonic presence, he blasted it all with
the fog machine while reciting the invocation of Solomon from
the magical text, The Greater Key of Solomon, Powers of
the Kingdom be beneath my left foot and my right hand.
(29:12):
Glory and eternity touch my shoulders and guard me in
the paths of victory, mercy, and justice. Be ye the
equilibrium and splendor of my life. And with that the
expedition came to an end. Although the team had failed
to capture any definitive evidence of a nantinook or any
(29:35):
other large creature on camera. It had certainly been an experience.
As for whether they had succeeded in banishing the alleged
evil presence and the area was now safe to resettle
in is a question for another day. So far, the
mystery of what supposedly haunts the forests and shores of
(29:55):
the cook Inlet remains to this day unexplained. This episode
was written by Diane Hope and Richard McLain smith. Diane
is an audio producer and sound recordist in her own right.
You can find out more about her work at Dianehope
(30:17):
dot com and on Instagram at in the sound Field.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Thank you as ever for listening.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Unexplained as an AV Club Productions podcast created by Richard
McLain Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music,
are also produced by me Richard McClain smith.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Unexplained.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
The book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide.
You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and
other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever
you get your podcasts, and feel free to get in
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heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation or
(30:58):
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can find out more at Unexplained podcast dot com and
reaches online through X and Blue Sky at Unexplained pod
and Facebook at Facebook dot com, Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast,
(31:29):
m
From the day the men arrived at the remote beach
on the Cook Inlet on the southern coast of Alaska,
they felt a pervasive sense of unease.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
One of the men, a normally.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Fit and healthy individual, felt nauseous and then vomited for
no apparent reason. Then, after they began exploring the area,
a few of the men came across a large stone
column set back from the shore among the trees. They
called it the Obelisk. After waving for the others to
(00:45):
come and see it too, another member of the team
approached it, only to find himself feeling suddenly overcome with
a strange, unpleasant feeling. It felt to him, he said,
like there was an evil energy emanating directly from it.
Then he staggered back a few paces and vomited. Two
(01:08):
The men were an expeditionary team who had been sent
by the Discovery Channel in twenty twenty one along with
the film crew, to see if the location of an
abandoned settlement situated on the inlet was safe to live in.
Home to Indigenous people and white settlers. The settlement had
been abandoned decades before under mysterious and some say frightening circumstances.
(01:34):
On the investigation team was Ashnaderhoff, Keithserville, Noah Craig, DJ Brewster,
and Kyle McDowell. They were assisted by two locals, Tommy
Evans and Frank Berestov, both descendants of former villagers. One
precaution the men took soon after they arrived was to
(01:58):
set up camp in an open air close to the beach,
a good distance from the treeline of a dense forest
that stretched for miles inland, because they'd been told by
historian Jeff Davis and local elders that the reason the
village had been abandoned decades earlier was due to something
(02:18):
monstrous that was said to lurk within the surrounding trees.
Over the next few days, the team, with a camera
crew in toe, set up cameras in the forest and
took video footage along with the audio recordings, exploring.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
The area around their camp.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
The settlement had once been an active fishing community with
a canning factory where the abundant fish caught from the
local waters had been processed, packaged, and exported. As they
searched an area far into the trees, the documentary team
found large pieces of old machinery from the factory in
(02:57):
odd places, lying unusual angles, as if they'd somehow been
thrown there by something with superhuman strength. But it wasn't
only physical evidence that began to spook the team. As
the days went by, even those who had originally been
skeptical of the stories about the location's dark history began
(03:20):
to feel as if they were being watched, convinced that
a malevolent presence was steadily closing in on them. You're
listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard McLean Smith. The former
(03:42):
settlement of Port Locke was located on the Lower Cook Inlet,
around two hundred miles south of Anchorage, at the far
tip of Alaska's Kenney Peninsula, not far along the coast
from the present day towns of Homer and Seldovia. The
area has been home to the so Piac people for centuries.
There's a nearby village inhabited mostly by Sugbiak along with
(04:06):
Russian settlers, called nan Wallach, which means place by the Lagoon,
and it has the reputation for being the creepiest place
in Alaska. Often referred to by locals as Port Chatham
rather than Port lock. The abandoned settlement is on private
property owned by the English Bay Corporation, who restrict access
(04:30):
to the area. There were no indications of anything strange
when in July seventeen eighty six British naval Captain Nathaniel
port Lock sailed up the Cook Inlet looking for a
safe place to anchor and reprovision his ship. Captain port
Lock had been appointed to command the merchant vessel the
(04:52):
King George just the year before by the King George's
Sound Company, of which he was a partner. Port Lock
kept meticulous notes about his extensive travels, which he published
in his elaborately titled seventeen eighty nine book, A Voyage
round the World, but more particularly to the Northwest Coast
(05:12):
of America. In these detailed records, he describes finding a
sheltered bay off the inlet, clearly not a modest man.
There's a sketch of it in the book, already bearing
the assumed name port Lock's Harbor, where the ship's crew
spent several days gathering provisions. The observant captain recorded that
(05:35):
some of the local people lived in temporary shelters made
of sticks and bark During the summer. They ate a
diet comprised mostly of fish supplemented by the dried inner
rind of pine bark, as well as hemlock and angelica roots,
plants considered poisonous by Europeans, but the locals seemed to
(05:56):
have adapted to the toxins and apparently a them without
any problem. One Internet blogger claims that six years before
port Lock arrived, explorers from Spain had visited the exact
same area but had fallen sick, some had even died,
while the remainder were haunted by strange, terrifying cries they
(06:20):
heard in the night. The cries started far off in
the mountains, but over time seemed to edge down through
the forest, getting closer towards them. The blogger also stated
that when port Lock's crew surveyed the land around the
bay that would later bear their captain's name, they found
(06:42):
the remnants of an abandoned native village. They wandered openly
why such a prime area full of game fish and
shellfish was now unsettled. Just then, some members of the
landing party grew sick and scared, and begged port Locke
to depart immediately, believing the area must have been cursed.
(07:06):
For what it's worth, port Lock's own accounts do not
appear to contain this sinister story, nor did he seem
to have been told any tales of what locals refer
to as the non Tenuck. But if he hadn't, he
would have been one of the few visitors to the
region who hadn't heard of it. The word non Tinuk,
(07:34):
found in the Chugach dialect of sugpiac Alutik, comes from
the Alaskan Native denar Ena word nantina, meaning those who
steal people. It describes a legendary monster with three toes
on each foot and six fingers on each hand, who
was woven into traditional tales as a way to scare
(07:57):
children into not wandering off into the world woods, though
some say it was never just a story. From the
late seventeen hundreds onwards, port Lock Sheltered Bay was settled
once again, first by native communities, later by fishermen, lumbermen,
and miners, nearly all of either Alaskan Native or Russian descent,
(08:22):
or those tales of the Nuntinuk remained firmly in the
folklore of the indigenous peoples. Some reports say that events
began to take a dark turn around eighteen sixty seven,
when a new community of nomadic Sugbiak set up a
camp on port Lock Bay, where they enjoyed the abundance
of seafood, But within a month they were apparently attacked
(08:47):
by what they described as cannibal giants, who raided their
encampment on an almost nightly basis. Tales tell of how
these giant, hairy, human like attackers fought with the wild savagery,
which the Sugbiak had never encountered before, and that although
the tribe fought back, the attacks would resume whenever game
(09:10):
animals became scarce in the area. Whatever the truth of
these stories, it is known that around the beginning of
the nineteen hundreds, the bountiful fish stocks attracted an American
company who brought in a fleet of commercial fishing boats
and built the Port Lock Cannery. The settlement grew quickly,
(09:31):
with accounts from the time describing a quaint and tidy
village nestled in a beautiful setting between the sea and
snow covered peaks. By nineteen twenty one, the town was
established enough to merit a United States Post office. The
seal of official township status records kept by the port
(09:52):
Lock Cannery management showed that early on the site had
been vacated. In nineteen o five, when the cannery ste
the supervisor noted that all the Native Alaskan workers promptly
left the area because of something in the forest. However,
the threat must have abaited, since the records also stated
(10:13):
that the workers returned the following year. But over the
subsequent years, rumors started to spread around the Kenai Peninsula
that weird things were happening at port Lock. It was
(10:37):
said that in the forest around port Lock, trees were
being completely ripped out of the ground, turned upside down,
and then thrust back into the earth, with the roots
facing up into the air. Locals began to speak of
a bigfoot like monster that was stalking the area their
very own non teanuck alarm, which creature said to walk
(11:01):
on two feet, had been seen around a Chromian mining
camp sixteen miles north of the town. It was also
said that citizens of port Lock began to experience a
series of strange disappearances and deaths. Sometime in the nineteen twenties,
a man named Albert Petka was said to have died
(11:23):
after receiving a fatal blow from a peculiar animal that
he was trying to scare off with his dogs. In
the nineteen thirties, a logger named Andrew Kamlock is claimed
to have died after being hit in the head by
a piece of logging equipment that would have taken the
strength of two or more large men to wield. When
(11:45):
the man's body was found, it was said that there
was blood on the equipment a good ten feet from
where he lay, as though someone or some think had
used the equipment in the attack and then tossed it aside.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Some reports also say.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
That Kamluck's dogs were found near by, torn to shreds
around the same time. According to Simyon Kvasnikoff, a resident
of present day nan Wallick, a gold miner also disappeared
after heading out for the day. No sign of him
was ever found. Another time, local man Tom Larsen was
(12:25):
said to have gone out chopping wood to make fish traps.
It was a calm, tranquil morning, with a faint mist
rising from the tree tops. Then Larsen sensed movement along
the shore. Looking up, he saw something large and hairy
on the beach. He ran back home and returned quickly
(12:46):
with his rifle. Racing down the beach to the water's edge,
he was alarmed to find the creature was still there.
It just stared at him, Larsen claimed later, and he
never could explain why he failed to fire at it,
but instead just watched as it slowly turned around, walked
(13:06):
up the beach, and disappeared into the trees. Over the
course of the next twenty years, as many as between
fifteen and thirty bodies were alleged to have turned up
in and around port Lock, along trails and on river banks,
some floating out.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Into the bay.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
It was rumored they'd been dismembered, the clothing ripped of shreds,
or more damage that bore no resemblance to wounds caused
by bears or wolves. One story of the apparent nantinook
(13:48):
stalking port Lock was that a group of hunters tracking
a moose through the local forest came across giant human
like tracks over eighteen inches long. As they closed in
on their prey, they reputedly found signs of an apparent
life and death struggle, where the grass had been matted
(14:08):
down over a wide area, as if disturbed by large animals.
From that point on, only one set of tracks emerged
deep enormous human like footprints that led up high into
the mist shrouded mountains. Twice, it was said, on the
foggiest of nights, something broke into the port Lock canning factory,
(14:32):
causing significant damage. Stories of other hauntings added to the
general atmosphere of terror. They included the specter of a
woman in a long black dress with a pale face,
who was said to appear from near by cliffs to
moan and scream before disappearing back into the rocky walls.
(14:55):
One season, its alleged that the cannery workers left town
for a second time, only agreeing to return the following year,
after the factory owners agreed to hire armored guards to
protect the camp around the clock. Then, in nineteen forty nine,
the town was completely abandoned. Many stories insist that, sick
(15:16):
and tired of living in fear of the ravages of
the Nanteinook, the locals fled, leaving many of their possessions behind.
Abandoned relics belonging to the previous residents can still be
found on the beach and in the woods to this day,
but tales of the Nanteinook do not end there. In
(15:38):
nineteen sixty eight, one hunter claimed to have been chased
by a strange creature while he was hunting in the area. Then,
in nineteen seventy three, three more hunters, beset by a
three day storm, were forced to take shelter in one
of Port Lock's abandoned buildings. On every night, they claimed
to hear something vast prowling round the cabin and what
(16:02):
sounded like two feet In nineteen ninety, a paramedic was
called out to attend to a seventy year old man
who'd suffered a heart attack while incarcerated in the Eagle
River Jail just north of Anchorage. While treating the man,
the paramedic happened to mention that he'd once hunted in
(16:23):
the area around Port Locke. At the mention of the word,
the elderly man instantly sat bolt upright and grabbed the
paramedic by the shirt.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Did it bother you? He said, with wild eyes. Did
you see it?
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Many of the stories about alleged attacks and sightings of
the nantinook come from an article written by journalist and
author Naomi Clouder published in The home A Tribune in
two thousand nine. From the article have been widely circulated
among crypto zoology websites ever since, further feeding the legend
(17:07):
of port Lock. But Clouder's article was based on just
two sources. The first was a nineteen seventy three report
in the Anchorage Daily News quoted in John Green's nineteen
seventy eight book Sasquatch, the Apes among Us. The piece
contains many of the buy now often retold stories of
(17:29):
alleged non Teinook attacks, but is very light on specific
details or corroborating evidence. The second source was an interview
with a pair of elderly Alaska Natives who grew up
in Port Lock. It's in these interviews that the name
non Teinuok becomes closely associated with port Lock.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
In print.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
One of the two elders, Milania Helen Kel, was born
in Port Locke in nineteen thirty four. She provided some
specific details, including the names of the men who supposedly
died or disappeared at the times of the alleged creature attacks.
Kel also insisted that her parents left Port Lock because
(18:12):
they could no longer put up with the constant attacks
of the Nantinook. Yet, despite these anecdotes, the archival news
reports from port Lock and its alter eager Port Chatham,
going back to its inception, are almost exclusively only about
commercial fishing, with the odd lumber and mining story peppered
(18:33):
in for good measure. In all those years, only a
single death from the settlement appears to have made it
into the papers, one man who was reported to have
died in an unspecified accident in nineteen twenty. Perhaps deaths
in the mining, lumbering and fishing industries, three highly dangerous
(18:54):
professions simply weren't thought to be newsworthy. Even so, only
one accidental death over several decades seems on the low
side for such a location. As for general crime, only
one was reported in the entire town's history, in nineteen
twenty four, when then port Lock postmaster one mister George
(19:18):
Henk was arrested by the Prohibition Enforcement Bureau for possessing
one gallon of moonshine. There was one case of missing
persons reported, however, that of two hunters, Ben Sweezey and
Bill Weaver, who left on a two week trip by
boat in nineteen seventeen and were never seen again. But
(19:39):
the men were from Steward, quite a distance down the coast,
and only mentioned in relation to Port Locke because a
boat that washed up there seemed to match the description
of the boat belonging to the missing men. In over
a quarter of a million pages from Alaskan newspaper reports
dating from the late seventeen high hundreds to nineteen sixty
(20:01):
three in the US Library of Congress, there seems to
be nothing as headline worthy as the killings and dismemberments
that are said to have occurred.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
In Port Lock.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Could it be that the demise of port Lock had
very little to do with the Nuntinook or any other
murderous Bigfoot type creature for that matter. In analyzing port
(20:34):
Lock's descent into becoming a ghost town, one fact stands out.
The completion of Alaska Route one, which was first open
to the public in nineteen forty eight. Running along the
opposite edge of the Kenai Peninsula, it allowed for much
more efficient travel between Anchorage and the many towns along
(20:56):
the peninsula. Towns that no longer needed to rely on
ship for their supplies, places inaccessible from the new highway,
like port Lock, suddenly had a significant part of their
livelihoods removed, much like towns along Route sixty six that
were bypassed by that famous interstate network in the nineteen
(21:16):
seventies and eighties. Furthermore, port Lock was much more remote
from the new Highway than Route sixty six towns ever were.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Even today, there is only a.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Single unpaved forest road within ten kilometers of the town
of Russian Alayut descent. Milania kiel As lived in the
nearby settlement of nan Walloch for most of her life.
Her ancestors were nomadic, moving from place to place with
the seasons, through the port Lock area and as far
(21:48):
afield as Homer and even Kodiak. To her, port Lock
was always a creepy place. As a kid, she was
told by adults to go out on foggy days because
that's when Nanteinuk were most likely to be walking around.
According to her, the creature is less a physical thing
(22:11):
and more a part human, part supernatural being. Her uncles
and grandfathers said that the Nantinuck had been alive for
a long time. They described it as tall and strong,
and liable to omit a noxious odor if you ever
got near to it, or so the story went. As
reported by the Homer Tribune back in two thousand and nine,
(22:35):
Milania's story was translated for the author of the article
by her younger cousin, Sally Ash. As she sat with Milania,
Sally got the distinct feeling that, tired of being asked
about Nantinuk and the abandonment of Portlock, her cousin simply
made up the story about how the creature was killing
(22:57):
people brought up to respect elders. Sally said that she
didn't feel able to correct her in front of the reporter,
but that the family had had a laugh about it later.
Sally suspects that the story might have been her elder
relative's way of trying to scare people away from an
area where family connections are deeply rooted and many generations
(23:20):
of ancestors lay buried. Nonetheless, if that had been the intention, sadly,
it only added to the allure of Portlock for a
whole new generation of crypto zoologists. Milania's explanation is also
not unusual among many Indigenous people who continue to believe
that creatures supposedly taking the form of the Nantinok, Sasquatch,
(23:46):
or Bigfoot are non physical beings. Some believe these creatures
live in another dimension but can appear in the physical
plane at will, and that they can be visible to
some people while at the same time remaining invisible to others.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
In the same group.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
They're often thought to be shapeshifters, disappearing or changing into
the form of a different creature if a human gets
too close, and if you try to shoot them, they'll
just pull the bullet from their bodies, completely unaffected by it.
(24:26):
Back on the cook Inlet in twenty twenty one, with
the Discovery Channel's exploration team, Nan Wallach, elder and local
historical expert Tommy Evans shared his own stories of strange
goings on around the.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Former settlement of Port Lock.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
One time, while he was walking along port Lock Beach
on a school trip, he heard people talking in a
native language he didn't understand, despite nobody else being around.
He also said that when a bear was in the vicinity,
the dogs didn't act too scared, but if it was
another thing, as he put it, the dogs became so
(25:05):
frightened they'd run straight to the owner's house to hide.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
A few nights.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Into their expedition, the documentary team was startled awake in
their tents by what sounded like a huge creature breathing
heavily as it prowled around their camp The following morning,
Convinced that they were close to encountering the nantinook, the
team set about putting cameras up in the trees to
(25:31):
try and capture the thing on film. As they set
to work cutting away some branches with an axe, they
claimed to hear knocking sounds coming back at them from
deeper within the forest. The knocking sounded like the axe
blodes they were making, and the pattern changed in rhythm
to mimic exactly.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
The sequence the team mate.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Around fifteen minutes of it was recorded, of which a
few were featured in the resulting TV show, Emboldened. The
team played these recordings of alleged bigfoot calls and wood
knocking over loud speakers into the forest, hoping to provoke
a response. Moments later, they were apparently spoot when something
(26:14):
they couldn't quite make out seemed to stir in the
surrounding foliage. Later that day, out in the forest, one
of the men was sure he'd heard a voice whisper
into his ear, despite no one being near him at
the time. That night, the team were woken suddenly again
from fitful sleep to loud crashing sounds outside their tents.
(26:38):
Scurrying outside to get a better look, the men shone
their flashlights out into the darkness, from where it appeared
something was hurling.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Rocks at them.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
They later claimed that the assault snapped the frame of
one of their tents in two, leaving them terrified. The
team's next step was to recruit bigfootspere specialist Ron Moorhead.
It was his belief that the men were being targeted
by the dark spirit of a nantinook, taking the form
of what he called a violent interdimensional being. A self
(27:14):
described psychic medium, Polyweerram was then brought in and invited
to try and make contact with whatever the being was.
After a short time exploring the area, she reported sensing
a dark and potentially deadly presence, then promptly left, but
for the self proclaimed demonologist James Sonia from the Alaska
(27:37):
Paranormal Response Crew, who was also brought in to help.
There was one thing the team needed to fear above
all else, the obelisk. When James Sonia arrived to join
the team, he took a moment to survey the eerily
(27:59):
remote location, taking in the still waters, the dark Sandy
Beach and the pine.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Covered hills beyond.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
But before long he found himself being drawn to the
strange stone pillar that had been discovered at the back
of the beach. Drawing closer, he claimed to sense a dark,
malicious energy emanating from it. It was clear to him
that a high class demon, as he put it, had
(28:28):
tied itself to the area and was feeding off the
obelisk's negative energy. They needed to perform an exorcism without delay,
and so James vied up his holy fog dispensing machine
that had been filled with holy water and infused with
rose and sage. Then steadily moving throughout the area, from
(28:51):
the obelisk to the team's camp and anywhere else they'd
sensed the apparent demonic presence, he blasted it all with
the fog machine while reciting the invocation of Solomon from
the magical text, The Greater Key of Solomon, Powers of
the Kingdom be beneath my left foot and my right hand.
(29:12):
Glory and eternity touch my shoulders and guard me in
the paths of victory, mercy, and justice. Be ye the
equilibrium and splendor of my life. And with that the
expedition came to an end. Although the team had failed
to capture any definitive evidence of a nantinook or any
(29:35):
other large creature on camera. It had certainly been an experience.
As for whether they had succeeded in banishing the alleged
evil presence and the area was now safe to resettle
in is a question for another day. So far, the
mystery of what supposedly haunts the forests and shores of
(29:55):
the cook Inlet remains to this day unexplained. This episode
was written by Diane Hope and Richard McLain smith. Diane
is an audio producer and sound recordist in her own right.
You can find out more about her work at Dianehope
(30:17):
dot com and on Instagram at in the sound Field.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Thank you as ever for listening.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Unexplained as an AV Club Productions podcast created by Richard
McLain Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music,
are also produced by me Richard McClain smith.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Unexplained.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
The book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide.
You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and
other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever
you get your podcasts, and feel free to get in
touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've
heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation or
(30:58):
a story of your own you'd like to share. You
can find out more at Unexplained podcast dot com and
reaches online through X and Blue Sky at Unexplained pod
and Facebook at Facebook dot com, Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast,
(31:29):
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