BWBS Ep:168 Missing In Alaska

There's a corner of America where people vanish at a startling rate, where massive searches can turn up nothing, no trail, no remains, no answers. That place is Alaska.

 In this episode of Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, we head into the shadowed heart of the Alaska Triangle, the vast wilderness between Anchorage, Juneau, and Utqiagvik, to explore why so many disappear and why indigenous stories have warned about forest-dwelling abductors for generations.In the summer of twenty twenty-two, sixty-nine-year-old Mary Dawn Wilson drove her Ford Focus nearly seven miles down the Stampede Trail near Healy, Alaska, a rugged route tied to the Into the Wild legend and notorious for swallowing travelers. With a two-year-old child in the back seat, Wilson pushed her vehicle far beyond where it reasonably could go.

When the car became stuck in mud, she made a decision no one can explain. She locked the toddler inside the vehicle and walked deeper into the wilderness, away from the highway and toward the interior.Search teams deployed helicopters, thermal imaging, drones, ATVs, and trained dogs. They located Wilson's personal belongings about a mile beyond the stuck car, proof she kept going. After that, the trail went cold. No footprints. No sign. Nothing. After three days, the active search was suspended. Mary Dawn Wilson has never been found.

We zoom out to examine the bigger pattern, thousands of disappearances across Alaska over the decades, many ending in complete erasure. We revisit chilling cases tied to the Alaska Triangle, including the nineteen seventy-two disappearance of House Majority Leader Hale Boggs and Alaska Congressman Nick Begich, whose plane was never recovered despite one of the largest search operations in American history. We examine the case of Gary Frank Sotherden, whose skull was found years later with bear tooth marks but little else, no clothing, no gear, no explanation for how he ended up so far from where he was supposed to be.

We consider Thomas Anthony Nuzzi, the traveling nurse last seen with an unidentified woman who has never been located, both of them vanishing into the Alaskan night without a trace. And we look at Michael LeMaitre, a marathon runner who vanished during a major, heavily monitored event on a mountainside crowded with other competitors and spectators, disappearing in broad daylight despite sophisticated search technology that should have been able to locate any warm body on that mountain. Alaska Native traditions carry their own explanations for these disappearances, stories of entities that mimic, lure, and take. 

The Tlingit speak of the Kushtaka, the land otter man, a shapeshifter said to imitate voices and faces to draw victims away from safety. The Yup'ik tell of the Hairy Man they call Miluquyuliq, a powerful forest presence that watches travelers from the treeline with an intensity that goes beyond mere animal curiosity. And the descendants of Portlock speak of the Nantinaq, a predatory figure so feared that locals ultimately abandoned their entire town rather than remain in its territory. By nineteen fifty, every resident had fled, leaving behind homes and livelihoods, choosing displacement over whatever stalked them from the surrounding forest. We also touch on modern reports, including sightings documented by the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization across Alaska, encounters with massive bipedal creatures covered in dark fur that emit strange vocalizations and watch humans with unsettling intelligence. 

These accounts span decades and come from experienced outdoorsmen, truckers, hunters, and others who know the difference between known wildlife and something else entirely.At the center of this episode lies an unsettling question that may never be answered. What made Mary Dawn Wilson walk the wrong way, into the deep, after leaving a child behind? She was no naive tourist. She knew the Alaskan wilderness, had lived in remote areas, understood the dangers. Yet something compelled her to drive down that haunted trail, to keep going when any sensible person would turn back, and finally to walk away from her stuck vehicle in the opposite direction of safety. Did she experience a medical crisis that impaired her judgment? Did the wilderness itself disorient her?

Or did she see something, hear something, follow something that called to her from the trees?The Tlingit have always warned their children about the Kushtaka's ability to mimic familiar voices, to appear as loved ones, to promise help while leading victims to their doom. The people of Portlock knew something was hunting them long before they abandoned their homes. And Mary Dawn Wilson, walking deeper into the Alaskan interior on that July afternoon, may have encountered whatever it is that has been taking people from this land for longer than anyone can remember.

Mary Dawn Wilson was four feet ten inches tall, weighed one

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace.
Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world
refuses to believe in. But those who have survived they
know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we
share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness bigfoot,

(00:22):
dog man UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make
it out, others aren't so lucky. Are you ready, because
once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the
woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close, and
remember some things in the woods don't want to be found.
Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads,

(00:46):
and let's head off into the woods if you dare.
Alaska is a land of contradictions. It's a place of staggering,

(01:06):
almost incomprehensible beauty, where glaciers carved through ancient mountains and
the Aurora borealis paints the winter sky in ribbons of
ethereal green. It's a place where visitors come seeking adventure,
connection with nature, and escape from the noise of civilization.
But beneath that breathtaking surface lies something else, entirely, something darker,

(01:30):
something that the indigenous peoples of this land have understood
for thousands of years, passed down through generations and whispered
warnings and fireside tales. Alaska, for all its majesty, is
also a place where people simply disappear. The statistics alone
are enough to send a chill down your spine. Since

(01:50):
nineteen eighty eight, more than sixteen thousand people have vanished
within the borders of Alaska, never to be seen again.
That's not a typo. Sixteen thousand sols swallowed by the
wilderness as if they never existed at all. In any
given year, somewhere between five hundred and two thousand people
go missing in this state, a rate that's more than
double the national average. Search and rescue teams conduct hundreds

(02:14):
of missions annually, and more often than not, they return
empty handed, finding neither living survivors nor remains. The missing
simply ceased to be, leaving behind only questions that may
never be answered. To put these numbers in perspective, consider
that Alaska is home to fewer than seven hundred fifty
thousand residents. The state is more than twice the size

(02:36):
of Texas, yet it contains barely enough people to fill
a medium sized city. Most of Alaska remains completely uninhabited,
dominated by vast stretches of boreal forest, towering mountain ranges,
massive glaciers, and frozen tundra that extends to the Arctic Ocean.
There are entire regions of this state that have never

(02:57):
been explored on foot, valleys and peaks that no human
being has ever visited, and yet, despite this sparse population
and limited access, the disappearance rate far exceeds what would
be expected for any comparable region. These aren't just hikers
who got lost or tourists who underestimated the terrain. The

(03:17):
missing include experienced bush pilots whose aircraft vanish without a
trace of wreckage, seasoned hunters who know the land intimately
but still walk into the trees and never walk out,
longtime residents who survived decades in the Alaskan wilderness only
to disappear one ordinary afternoon. Even politicians and military personnel

(03:39):
have been claimed by this hungry land, and perhaps most
disturbing of all, the searches that follow almost never find
any evidence at all. No bodies, no bones, no clothing,
no gear, just silence and emptiness where a human being
used to exist. There's a region within Alaska that researchers
and paranormal investigators have come to call the Alaska Triangle

(04:02):
picture a vast stretch of wilderness bounded by three points
Anchorage in the south, Juno in the southeast, and Utkiyaghvic
formerly known as Barrow on the northern coast. Within this
enormous triangle of land lies some of the most beautiful
and most deadly terrain on Earth. Dense boreal forests that
stretched for hundreds of miles without a single road or trail,

(04:26):
Mountain ranges with peaks that pierce the clouds, and glaciers
that have been grinding through rock since before recorded history.
Lakes and rivers so numerous that no complete count has
ever been made. More than half of America's federally designated
wilderness lies within Alaska, and much of that wilderness falls
within the boundaries of the triangle. The phenomenon first captured

(04:48):
national attention in October of nineteen seventy two when a
small private aircraft carrying some very important passengers vanished somewhere
between Anchorage and Juno. On board that twin inn JINCEESNA
three to ten were House majority leader hail bogs, Alaska
Congressman Nick Beggach, Beggag's aide Russell Brown, and pilot Don John's.

(05:10):
These weren't inexperienced travelers venturing into unknown territory. John's was
a seasoned Bush pilot with thousands of hours of flight time,
intimately familiar with Alaska's challenging flying conditions. The route between
Anchorage and Juno was well established and heavily traveled, Yet
somewhere over the Alaska Triangle, all four men simply ceased

(05:31):
to exist. What followed was one of the most extensive
search and rescue operations in American history. For more than
a month, fifty civilian planes and forty military aircraft scoured
a search area of thirty two thousand square miles, an
area larger than the entire state of Maine. Coastguard cutters
and private boats probed the coastal waters. Ground teams pushed

(05:54):
into the most remote valleys and peaks, facing treacherous terrain
and unpredictable weather, and they found absolutely nothing. Not a
single piece of wreckage, not a fragment of the aircraft,
not one personal effect belonging to any of the four men.
It was as if the plane had simply been erased
from existence, wiped from the world without leaving so much

(06:16):
as a scratch on the landscape. The search eventually had
to be called off, and all four passengers were declared
legally dead. To this day, neither the plane nor any
remains have ever been discovered. Some have speculated that the
aircraft crashed into a glacier, which then consumed the wreckage
beneath layers of ice. Others suggest it may have gone

(06:37):
down in one of Alaska's countless deep lakes, sinking beyond
the reach of any search effort. But these explanations, while possible,
don't fully account for the completeness of the disappearance. Crashes
leave debris fields, they leave scorch marks and gouged earth.
They leave something. The Bog's flight left nothing at all.

(06:58):
The Bog's disappearance was far from an isolated incident. Aviation
losses in Alaska have been distressingly common throughout the state's history.
In nineteen fifty, a Douglas C fifty four Skymaster, a
massive military transport aircraft, vanished during a routine flight from
Alaska to Minnesota. The plane was carrying forty four people,

(07:19):
including eight crew members, three engineers, thirty four service members,
and two civilians. Radio contact was maintained normally until shortly
after takeoff, when all communication went eerily silent. The plane
never reached its destination and was never found. Despite search
efforts covering more than three hundred thousand square miles, not

(07:41):
a single trace of the aircraft or its passengers was
ever located. In nineteen ninety, Assessina three forty, carrying a
pilot and four passengers, disappeared without so much as a
distress call. The pattern repeats itself again and again throughout
Alaska's aviation history, planes dropping off radar and vanish into
thin air, their wreckage seemingly absorbed by the land itself.

(08:05):
Some of these aircraft may indeed lie beneath glaciers or
at the bottom of deep lakes, but the sheer number
of complete disappearances cases where extensive searches find absolutely nothing,
suggests that something more than ordinary terrain challenges may be
at work. But it's not just aircraft that disappear in Alaska.
The ground level disappearances are in many ways even more troubling.

(08:29):
There's the case of Gary frank Sotherden, a twenty five
year old New Yorker who came to Alaska in the
mid nineteen seventies on a hunting expedition. He ventured into
the wilderness near the Porcupine River and was never heard
from again. For more than two decades, his fate remained
a complete mystery, one more name on the ever growing
list of Alaska's missing. Then, in nineteen ninety seven, hikers

(08:53):
stumbled upon a human skull in the remote backcountry. DNA
testing eventually confirmed the remains belong to Sootharden, and forensic
analysis revealed something chilling. Tooth penetrations on the skull suggested
he had been attacked by a bear. But even with
this discovery, questions remain. Why was only his skull found?

(09:14):
What happened to the rest of his remains, his clothing,
his gear, his weapon? How did he end up so
far from where he was supposed to be? A bear
attack would leave evidence beyond a single skull, scattered bones
and torn fabric, and other traces of violence, The full
truth of his final hours remains unknown, another partial answer

(09:35):
that raises more questions than it resolves. Then there's the
case of Thomas Anthony Newsey, a traveling nurse who vanished
from Anchorage in June of two thousand and one. Newsy
was an experienced traveler who moved from assignment to assignment,
living in motels and working temporary positions throughout Alaska. Unlike
most residents, he didn't have a permanent home, choosing instead

(09:58):
a nomadic lifestyle that suited his profession. He was working
in Bethel, a short flight away from Anchorage, but maintained
a residence in the city. When he failed to show
up for his next assignment, investigators began piecing together his
final days. What they found was deeply unsettling. Gas Station
security footage showed Newsy buying cigarettes and snacks on the

(10:20):
night before his disappearance. He wasn't alone with him was
an unidentified woman who has never been found or identified.
Motel staff reported seeing a strange couple, a man and
a woman in Newsy's room. His bicycle was discovered at
a storage unit, and as jeep was found twelve miles
outside Anchorage. The evidence suggested that Newsy had left his

(10:43):
room voluntarily, possibly in the company of people he knew
or trusted. But despite these tantalizing clues, neither Newsy nor
the mysterious woman he was seen with have ever been found.
The case remains as cold as the Alaskan winner. Another
life claimed by four horses we don't understand. In twenty twelve,

(11:03):
a marathon runner named Michael Lamater participated in the Grueling
mount Marathon race near Seward. This annual Fourth of July
tradition sends runners scrambling up and down a treacherous mountain
course that claims injuries every year. It's considered one of
the most challenging races in North America, with a course
that includes near vertical scrambles, loose rock, and terrain that

(11:26):
would be considered extreme by any standard. Lamay was wearing
black shorts, a black T shirt, a headband, white shoes,
and his race bib number five forty eight. He was
last seen by other runners during the descent, making his
way down the mountain as hundreds of others did the same.
When he failed to cross the finish line hours after

(11:46):
most competitors had completed the course, search teams were dispatched.
An Alaska Air National Guard helicopter equipped with sophisticated heat
sensing technology swept the mountain and detected no warm bodies.
The technology was supposed to be able to locate a
living human anywhere on that mountain side, but it found nothing.

(12:06):
Ground searches continued for three days, involving professional rescuers, volunteers,
and fellow runners who knew the course intimately. Lemaitre's body
has never been found. He simply vanished from a mountain
side crowded with other runners in broad daylight during one
of the most heavily monitored events in Alaska's sporting calendar.

(12:27):
The complete disappearance of a person from such a public
and populated setting defies conventional explanation. The official explanations for
these disappearances often point to the obvious dangers of the
Alaskan wilderness. The terrain is unforgiving, a maze of glaciers
riddled with hidden crevasses that can swallow a person in seconds,

(12:48):
plunging them into frozen depths where recovery is essentially impossible.
Avalanches can bury victims under tons of snow and ice,
concealing them so thoroughly that even extensive so urches may
never locate their remains. Rivers swollen with glacial melt can
sweep even strong swimmers to their deaths, carrying bodies miles

(13:09):
downstream or trapping them beneath log jams. Hypothermia can set
in within hours, even in summer, as temperatures plunge and
wet conditions drain body heat faster than it can be replaced.
And then there are the predators. Alaska is home to
the highest concentration of bears in North America. Grizzly bears,

(13:29):
some of the largest and most powerful carnivores on the continent,
roam freely throughout the state. Black bears, though smaller, are
still dangerous and far more numerous in the northern regions.
Polar bears pose an additional threat. Wolves travel in packs
capable of bringing down moose, and while attacks on humans
are rare, they do occur. All of these factors undoubtedly

(13:52):
contribute to the high disappearance rate. But these explanations, while
certainly valid in many cases, don't account for everything. They
don't explain why search teams so rarely find any evidence
at all, even in cases where the victim's last known
location is well established. They don't explain the sheer volume
of disappearances, which exceeds what might be expected even accounting

(14:16):
for the dangerous terrain, and they definitely don't explain the
stranger aspects of many cases. The belongings found neatly arranged,
as if placed there deliberately, the cameras with final photographs
showing nothing but a strange blur or streak of light,
the boats found drifting without their owners. The GPS devices
that show normal paths suddenly ending in impossible locations. Researchers

(14:41):
have proposed various theories to explain these anomalies. Some point
to the extreme magnetic declination in the region, which can
throw compasses off by as much as thirty degrees. In
the days before GPS became ubiquitous, this could have easily
led pilots and hikers far astray from their intended roots,
them into terrain they didn't recognize and couldn't navigate. Stay

(15:03):
tuned for more Backwoods big Foot stories. We'll be back
after these messages. Even today, GPS signals can be unreliable
in Alaska's deep valleys and dense forests, leaving travelers suddenly
without the electronic navigation they've come to depend upon. Others
mention the phenomenon of whiteout conditions, where blowing snow makes

(15:25):
it impossible to distinguish sky from ground. Disorienting even the
most experienced outdoorsmen and pilots. In a whiteout, all sense
of direction vanishes, the horizon disappears. Pilots have been known
to fly directly into mountain sides, convinced they were climbing
when they were actually descending. Hikers have walked in circles

(15:46):
for hours, certain they were making progress when they were
actually retracing their own footsteps. The psychological effects of such
disorientation can be profound, leading to panic, poor decisions, and
fatal mistake. There are documented cases of audio hallucinations and
severe disorientation reported by search and rescue workers operating in

(16:08):
certain areas of the Triangle. Experienced rescuers have described hearing
voices that weren't there, seeing movement in their peripheral vision
that vanished when they turned to look, feeling an overwhelming
sense of being watched by something they couldn't identify. Some
have attributed these experiences to stress and exhaustion. Others believe

(16:28):
there may be something more unusual at work, perhaps electro
magnetic anomalies or other natural phenomena that affect human perception
in ways we don't fully understand. But the indigenous peoples
who have called this land home for millennia, have their
own explanations, explanations that speak to something far stranger and
far more ancient than magnetic anomalies or weather phenomena. To them,

(16:53):
the disappearances are not merely the result of natural hazards.
They are the work of beings that have stalked these lands.
It's time immemorial, creatures that exist in the spaces between
the human world and something else entirely. The Tlingett and
Simshian peoples of the Pacific northwest coast speak of a
creature they call the Kushtaka, which translates roughly to land

(17:15):
otter man. According to their traditions, which stretch back at
least ten thousand years, the Kushtaka is a shape shifter,
a being that can take the form of an otter,
a human, or something in between. It dwells in the
waters and forests of the region, watching, waiting, hunting, and
its prey is human. The Kushtaka are said to emit

(17:37):
a distinctive call, a high pitched three part whistle in
the pattern of low high low. Those who hear this
sound in the wilderness should be extremely wary, for it
may signal that they have attracted the attention of something
that wishes them harm. The Kushtaka is no friendly for
a spirit. In the darker versions of the legend, it
lures its victims to their deaths by mimicking the c

(18:00):
of a baby or the screams of a woman in distress.
The creature waits until a good hearted person comes running
to help, then drags them into the water to drown them,
or tears them to pieces with its claws. In some tales,
the kushtaka doesn't kill its victims outright, but transforms them
into more kushtaka, trapping their souls in an eternal half

(18:22):
existence that prevents them from ever being reincarnated. According to
kling It belief, this is perhaps the worst fate of all,
an existence without true death and without true life, forever
suspended in a state of inhuman consciousness. Cling At mothers
have used these stories for generations to warn their children
away from the water's edge and the forest shadows, places

(18:44):
where the Kushtaka is said to lurk. Don't go out
on a foggy day. Elders would tell the young that's
when he's walking around, you could run into him, and
you never know what he might do. Some versions of
the legend suggest that the Kushtaka can be warded off
with certain protections. Dogs are said to terrify the creature,
as are fire, copper, and tobacco. A traveler who carries

(19:08):
these items may be safe from the Kushtaka's attention. One
who ventures into the wilderness without them may not be
so fortunate. But the Kushtaka stories aren't merely cautionary tales
invented to keep children safe. They contain specific details about
the creature's appearance and behavior, details that have remained consistent
across generations and across different communities. These are not the

(19:31):
vague outlines of a boogeyman, but the precise observations of
a people who have lived alongside something very real and
very dangerous. One historical account describes a Tlinget man named
Kaka who became separated from his companions during a fishing trip.
He was approached by what appeared to be his mother
and sister in a canoe, calling out that they had

(19:52):
been looking for him for a long time, But through
careful observation, Kaka was able to see through their disguise,
seeing their t true forms as land otter men astride
floating pieces of driftwood. The Yupik people of southwestern Alaska
have their own version of this creature, which they call
the milokoyulic or hairy man. Like the Kushtaka, this being

(20:15):
is described as enormous, covered in fur, and possessing a
malevolent intelligence. Eyewitnesses have reported seeing figures matching this description
standing at the tree line watching human travelers with an
intensity that goes beyond mere animal curiosity. One witness described
coming face to face with a figure of a human

(20:35):
being but way bigger, with a head that was bigger
and rounder, and arms that were massive. The creature stood
there staring eye to eye before disappearing back into the wilderness.
Similar beings appear in the legends of other Alaskan indigenous groups,
suggesting that encounters with large, hairy humanoid creatures are a

(20:55):
widespread phenomenon in the region. At the southern tip of
the key Ni Peninsula lies a place that seems to
validate these ancient fears, the ghost town of Port Lock.
This small fishing village was established in the early twentieth
century and grew into a thriving community with a cannery,
a post office, and a school. The population consisted mainly

(21:18):
of Russian alerts, indigenous people who had lived in the
region for generations. For a time, the settlement prospered, benefiting
from the rich salmon runs and the surrounding waters, but
then things began to go wrong. The elders of nearby
nan Waalak tell of a series of mysterious deaths and
disappearances that plagued port Lock throughout the nineteen thirties and forties.

(21:41):
Hunters would venture into the surrounding forests and never return.
When search parties went looking for them, they sometimes found
what remained of the missing men scattered across the brush,
torn apart in ways that couldn't be explained by normal
predator attacks. The survivors began to speak of something stalking
the village, something that emerged from the fog and watched

(22:02):
from the forest edges with eyes that gleamed within human intelligence.
They gave this creature a name, Nanti Knock, which translates
roughly to those who steal people. Unlike the North American
sasquatch of popular culture, the Nanti Knock was described as
having supernatural abilities and an explicitly evil nature. Witnesses reported

(22:25):
not just sightings, but strange illnesses that would afflict people
after encounters, unexplainable sounds that echoed through the forest at night,
and a pervasive smell that seemed to announce the creature's presence.
The physical characteristics were typically described as similar to bigfoot,
upwards of eight feet tall, covered in dark fur, with

(22:45):
broad shoulders and limbs of enormous strength, but it was
the creature's behavior that set it apart. The Nanton Knock
seemed to specifically target humans, stalking them with an intelligence
and patience that went beyond any ordinary predator. Some accounts
say the creature was responsible for a death in nineteen
thirty one, when a man named Andrew Camlock went into

(23:07):
the forest to cut timber and was found with his
head caved in, struck by equipment so heavy it would
have required a team of dogs to move it. His
dogs were found nearby, torn to pieces. Other accounts describe
hunters who went into the forest and were found days later,
their bodies mutilated in ways that suggested not just violence,

(23:27):
but something almost ritualistic. The community tried to protect itself,
implementing strict rules curfews, at night, armed guards patrolling the streets,
and an absolute prohibition on anyone venturing into the forest alone.
But the rules weren't enough. By the late nineteen forties,
the residents of port Lock had had enough. One by one,

(23:49):
families began to pack their belongings and leave, fleeing to
safer communities along the coast. By nineteen fifty, the village
was completely abandoned. The Post Office US closed its doors,
the cannery fell silent, the buildings were left to decay,
slowly consumed by the encroaching forest. Today, Portlock stands as

(24:10):
one of Alaska's most notorious ghost towns, a testament to
whatever drove an entire community to abandon their homes and livelihoods.
Visitors to the site have reported feeling an oppressive presence,
a sense of being watched by something in the surrounding forest.
Some have heard strange sounds at night, movements in the
brush that don't match any known animal. Some skeptics dismissed

(24:33):
the non to Knock legends as folklore, embellished over time,
pointing out that the stories only gained widespread attention in
the two thousands. Interviews with descendants of Portlock residents have
revealed that at least some of the more sensational details
may have been exaggerated or even invented to satisfy curious journalists.
One relative of an original storyteller admitted that her cousin

(24:55):
kind of made up a story because she was getting
tired of people asking if this is true. But even
those who dismissed the more dramatic elements of the tale
acknowledge that something caused port Lock to be abandoned, that
the village has an undeniably eerie atmosphere that affects visitors
to this day. He's old, one descendant said of the
Nanty Knock. He's tall, he's strong, he's hairy. It lives

(25:20):
in the woods, and you can tell when he's getting near.
You can smell him. My mom used to talk about
it a lot. Respect him, keep distance, he moved around,
he was quick. Whether this represents an actual creature, a
psychological phenomenon, or something else entirely, the belief in the
Nante Knock remains strong among the people whose ancestors fled

(25:42):
port Lock. For them, the creature is not a legend,
but a reality, something to be feared and avoided rather
than dismissed or debunked. The big Foot Field Researchers organization
has documented twenty two separate Sasquatch sidings in Alaska, spanning
from nineteen eighty five to twenty twenty two. These encounters
have occurred throughout the state, from the Tongas National Forest

(26:05):
in the southeast to the frozen expanses near Denali National Park.
Witnesses describe creatures standing seven to twelve feet tall, covered
in dark or reddish fur, often emitting a pungent odor
or eerie vocalizations like whoops, howls, or screams that match
no known animal. One witness, a trucker with over fifteen

(26:26):
years of experience on Alaska's highways, described an encounter on
the park's highway between Anchorage and Fairbanks. The creature he
saw was unlike any animal I've seen, he reported, emphasizing
its bipedal posture and human like gaze. Whether you believe
in shape shifting otters, supernatural giants, or simply the overwhelming

(26:46):
and unforgiving power of nature, one thing is undeniable. Alaska
is a place where people vanish with disturbing regularity, and
where the land seems to guard its secrets with fierce determination.
The wilderness here is not passive or neutral. It is
an active force, ancient and indifferent to human concerns, operating

(27:07):
according to rules that we may never fully understand. The
indigenous peoples knew this. They developed elaborate systems of taboos
and protections designed to allow them to survive in a
land that seemed determined to destroy them. Modern visitors, armed
with GPS devices and satellite phones and gortex clothing often

(27:27):
forget that technology is no match for the wild. The
missing sixteen thousand are a constant reminder that Alaska takes
what it wants when it wants, and returns nothing in exchange.
It is against this backdrop of mystery and fear that
we must consider the case of Mary Don Wilson, a
sixty nine year old grandmother who, on a July morning

(27:48):
in twenty twenty two, drove down a road haunted by
tragedy and disappeared without a trace, leaving behind only a
locked car and a two year old child who would
never be able to tell us what she saw. The
Stampede trail begins at mile marker two fifty one of
the George Parks Highway, just two miles north of the
small community of Healey, Alaska. For the first eight miles

(28:11):
it's a maintained gravel road, rough but passable for most vehicles.
Beyond that point, the road deteriorates into an overgrown path
suitable only for all terrain vehicles, dog sleds, or determined
hikers willing to slog through mud ford rivers and in
dear clouds of mosquitoes that have been known to drive
even the hardiest outdoorsmen to the brink of madness. The

(28:34):
trail ends at an abandoned antimony mine on Stampede Creek,
near a small grass air strip that sees little traffic
these days. The total distance from the highway to the
mine is approximately fifty miles, but most travelers never make
it more than a fraction of that distance. For most
of its history, the Stampede Trail was known only to miners, hunters,

(28:55):
and the occasional trapper seeking firs in the surrounding wilderness.
It was blazed in nineteen o three by prospectors drawn
to the Contishna region by the promise of gold, and
for decades it served as a utilitarian route through some
of Alaska's most challenging terrain. In the nineteen thirties, a
miner named Earl Pilgrim used the trail to access his

(29:17):
antimony claims on Stampede Creek. Construction crews attempted to upgrade
the road in the nineteen sixties, but the project was
eventually abandoned, leaving behind a trail that was neither fully
developed nor fully wild That changed in nineteen ninety two,
when a young man named Christopher McCandless walked into the
wilderness along this trail and never walked out alive. McCandless

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was twenty four years old, a recent graduate of Emory
University who had rejected the trappings of conventional society in
favor of a wandering life on the road. He came
from an affluent family in Virginia, where his father worked
as an aerospace engineer and his mother as a secretary.
Stay tuned for more back woods buil foot stories. We'll

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be back after these messages. By all accounts, he was
intelligent and driven, excelling academically and writing for his campus newspaper.
But beneath the surface of this successful young man was
a deep dissatisfaction with the values of mainstream American society.
After graduating, McCandless donated his entire savings of twenty four

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thousand dollars to charity, abandoned his car and most of
his possessions, and set out on a two year journey
across North America, working odd jobs and dreaming of an
ultimate test of self reliance in the Alaskan bush. In
April of nineteen ninety two, McCandless arrived in Fairbanks and
began making his way toward the wilderness. Three days later,

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he hitched a ride to the start of the Stampede
trail from a local man, who reportedly warned him that
he seemed ill prepared for what lay ahead. McCandless carried
only about ten pounds of rice, a Remington Nylon sixty
six semi automatic rifle, four hundred rounds of twenty two
caliber ammunition, a few books, including one on local plant life,

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and basic camping supplies. He did not have a good
map of the area. His rifle was generally considered to
have insufficient firepower for big game hunting or defense against
bears by any objective measure. He was woefully unprepared for
an extended stay in the Alaskan wilderness. About twenty eight
miles down the trail, McCandless came upon an abandoned bus

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that would become both his shelter and his tomb. The
bus was a nineteen forty six International harvester, originally part
of the Fairbanks City transit system, later repurposed as housing
for workers building a mining road in the early nineteen sixties.
It had been towed into the wilderness by a Caterpillar
D eight bulldozer as its engine had been removed, and

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was equipped with a couple of beds and a wood
burning stove. When the mining project was abandoned, the other
buses used by the construction crew were removed. Plus one
forty two, as it came to be known, was left
behind due to a broken rear axle. Over the following decades,
it became a shelter for hunters and trappers, a lonely

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outpost of civilization in an otherwise trackless wilderness. McCandless lived
in that bus from late April until his death sometime
in mid August. He kept a journal documenting his experiences,
recording the animals he killed for food, including porcupines, squirrels, ptarmigans,
and Canada geese. He also managed to kill a moose

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at one point, though much of the meat spoiled before
he could preserve it. He foraged for edible plants, relying
on his identification guide to distinguish safe species from dangerous ones.
His journal entries reveal a range of emotional states, from
elation at his connection with nature to despair as his
situation deteriorated. He had originally planned to hike westward until

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he reached the Bearing Sea, but the thick Alaskan bush
forced him to abandon that goal and return to the bus.
McCandless was trapped by circumstances he hadn't anticipated. By the
time he tried to hike back to civilization in early July,
the Teklanica River had swollen with snow melt and become impassable.
This river, which he had easily forded in late April

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when it was still partially frozen, was now a raging
torrent that could have swept away even an experienced swimmer.
McCandless returned to the bus and continued trying to survive
on what the land provided. But the land was not generous.
Alaska's interior, despite its vast expanses, is actually quite poor
in terms of game and edible vegetation compared to more

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temperate regions. A person trying to live off the land
faces constant challenges finding enough calories to sustain themselves. By August,
McCandless was starving, his body weight having dropped to just
sixty seven pounds about thirty kilograms. Some researchers believe he
may have been poisoned by wild potato seeds, which contain

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an amino acid called can aveny that can function as
an anti metabolite, interfering with the body's ability to process nutrients.
This theory, championed by author John Krackauur, suggests that McCandless
may have been slowly poisoned even as he struggled to
find enough food to survive. Others dispute this explanation, arguing

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that simple starvation was sufficient to explain his death. Whatever
the exact cause, McCandless's final journal entry, dated August twelfth,
consisted of only a few words, indicating that his end
was near. Moose hunters discovered his remains on September sixth,
nineteen ninety two. His body, wrapped in a sleeping bag,

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lay on one of the bus's beds. A note was
attached to the door, written in his own hand, asking
anyone who found him to contact his parents. The official
cause of death was starvation. He was twenty four years old,
just months away from his twenty fifth birthday. In a
manifesto written on a piece of plywood found in the bus,

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had proclaimed himself an extremist, an esthetic voyager whose home
is the road, facing a climactic battle to kill the
false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual revolution. The
revolution had ended not in victory, but in a lonely death,
miles from anywhere, in an abandoned bus that most people
didn't even know existed. Author John Krakauer documented McCandless's story

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in a nineteen ninety three article for Outside magazine, and
later expanded it into the best selling book Into the Wild,
which was adapted into a critically acclaimed film directed by
Sean Penn in two thousand and seven, with Emil Hirsch
portraying the doomed adventurer. McCandless became a polarizing figure to some,
a romantic idealist in the tradition of Thoreau and Tolstoy,

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a young man who had the courage to reject a
society he found hollow and pursue an authentic life on
his own terms to others, a reckless fool whose death
was entirely preventable, a naive outlome cider who ignored the
warnings of those who knew the land, and paid the
ultimate price for his arrogance. What no one could have
predicted was the effect the story would have on the

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Stampede trail itself. Bus one forty two became a pilgrimage site,
drawing hundreds of visitors every year from around the world,
all seeking to experience the place where McCandless spent his
final days. They came from Germany, Japan, Brazil, Russia, from
every corner of the globe. They brought flowers and journals

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and photographs, leaving tributes to a young man most of
them had never met. They wanted to understand what had
drawn McCandless to this place, what he had found here,
what he had been seeking in his rejection of conventional life.
The problem was that many of these pilgrims were as
unprepared as McCandless himself had been. The Taklanica River, the

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same barrier that had trapped. McCandless claimed more lives. In
August of twenty ten, a Swiss hiker named Claire Ackerman
drowned while attempting to cross. She was an experienced outdoors woman,
but the river was running high and fast, and she
was swept away before her companions could reach her. Her
body was recovered downstream. In July of twenty nineteen, Veronica

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Nikonava of Belarus, just twenty four years old and recently married,
was crossing the river with her new husband when she
lost her footing. The current carried her away, and despite
desperate efforts to find her, her body was recovered only
after an extensive search. She had been married for just weeks.
Countless other pilgrims required rescue at significant cost and time, resources,

(37:39):
and risk to the rescuers themselves. Hikers would become stranded
on the far side of the Taklanica when the water rose,
unable to cross back to safety. Others would get lost
in the dense brush, wandering for hours or days before
being located by search teams. Some suffered injuries on the
rough terrain, requiring helicopter evacuation from remote areas with limited

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landing zones. Each rescue cost thousands of dollars and put
the lives of search and rescue personnel at risk. Local residents,
many of whom had little patients for the romanticism surrounding
the candless, grew frustrated and then angry at the constant
stream of unprepared visitors requiring their assistance. In June of
twenty twenty, the Alaska Army National Guard finally removed Bus

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one forty two from its location, airlifting it out by
Chinook helicopter in what was described as a training exercise.
The Alaska Department of Natural Resources cited public safety as
the primary reason for the removal, noting the deaths and
numerous rescues associated with visitors attempting to reach the bus.
The bus was eventually deposited at the University of Alaska

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Museum of the North and Fairbanks, where plans were announced
to create an outdoor exhibit that would allow visitors to
experience its history safely. Officials hoped that removing the destination
would reduce the stream of unprepared pilgrims and the associated casualties,
but the bus's removal didn't change the fundamental nature of
the stampede trail. It remained what it had always been,

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a remote, challenging, and potentially deadly route into one of
the most unforgiving landscapes on Earth. The trail still flooded regularly,
still crossed rivers that could become lethal with little warning,
still wound through country inhabited by grizzly bears and wolves.
The magic Bus might be gone, but the magic, if

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you could call it, that remained. The Stampede Trail was
still a place where people went in and didn't always
come out. Less than two years after the bus was removed,
another person would vanish on this trail, under circumstances that
remain unexplained to this day. It was onto this trail,
haunted by decades of tragedy, that Mary Down Wilson drove

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her forward focus on the morning of July twelfth, twenty
twenty two. She was sixty nine years old, stood just
four feet ten inches tall, weighed about one hundred and
sixty pounds, and had gray hair and blue eyes. She
wore a floral print dress layered over multiple articles of clothing,
topped with a cream colored Alaska native kuspuck, a traditional

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hooded overshirt with a large front pocket decorated with a
green flower print. She had a small scar on her
left ear. She may have used the last name Stanley
at times, and she had a two year old child
with her, a little girl who was the daughter of
close family friends, whom Wilson had agreed to watch for
a few days while the child's mother traveled to rural

(40:36):
Alaska for work. The night before, Wilson had stayed with
friends in Healey, a small town of about one thousand
residents that serves as the gateway to Denali National Park
and Preserve. It's a community built around tourism and the
Alaska Railroad, a place where locals are accustomed to visitors
passing through on their way to see the mountain or

(40:57):
explore the surrounding wilderness. All all accounts, Wilson's evening in
Healey was unremarkable. She socialized with her friends, she slept,
and on the morning of July twelfth, she packed her
belongings into her car, said some casual goodbyes, and drove away.
Her friends expected nothing unusual. They had no reason to
believe that anything was wrong, no indication that Wilson was

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in distress or planning anything out of the ordinary. They
didn't know it would be the last time anyone would
see Mary Dawn Wilson. What happened next can only be
reconstructed from the physical evidence left behind, and that evidence
raises more questions than it answers. At some point on
July twelfth, Wilson turned off the park's highway and onto

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the Stampede Trail. She drove past the eight mile Lake area,
past the point where the maintained road ends and the
rough trail begins. She continued for nearly seven miles, far
beyond where a ford Focus should reasonably go. The Stampede Trail,
even in its early sections, is not designed for passenger vehicles.
It's rutted and muddy, with sections that flood regularly and

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others that are little more than overgrown paths through dense vegetation.
Driving a ford Focus seven miles down this trail would
require either remarkable determination or remarkable disorientation. And then her
car got stuck. We don't know exactly what happened in
the hours that followed. We don't know why Wilson chose
to drive down the Stampede Trail in the first place,

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especially with a toddler in the car. She wasn't a
naive tourist, unfamiliar with Alaska's dangers. According to one person
who knew her years earlier, Wilson was a rugged Alaska type,
familiar with backcountry survival, and had the ability to live
off the land. She had reportedly lived in various remote
areas of Alaska throughout her life, including along the Kobuk

(42:48):
River near Noah Tak. This was someone who should have
understood what the stampede trail was and what driving down
it would entail. We don't know if she intended to
go as far as she did, or she simply kept driving,
perhaps trying to find a place to turn around, until
the road finally defeated her vehicle. We don't know what
thoughts went through her mind when she realized she was

(43:10):
stranded nearly seven miles from the highway in an area
with no cell phone coverage, with a two year old
who depended on her for survival. We can only imagine
the fear and confusion she must have felt as the
reality of her situation became clear. Stuck in the mud,
miles from help, with a small child and no way
to call for assistance. What we do know is that

(43:32):
Wilson attempted to free her car. Evidence at the scene
showed signs of effort to extricate the vehicle from whatever
had immobilized it, likely deep mud or a rut too
severe to escape. We know that at some point she
made a decision that would seal her fate and potentially
saved the life of the child in her care. She
locked the two year old inside the vehicle, presumably for safety,

(43:55):
perhaps believing she would return shortly with help, or that
someone would find the car before or too long. And
then she began walking. But she didn't walk toward the
highway and civilization. She walked deeper into the wilderness, in
the opposite direction of safety, further down the Stampede Trail
toward the remote interior. Alaska State Troopers received a report

(44:16):
of an abandoned vehicle on the Stampede Trail at one
thirty one in the morning on July fourteenth, approximately forty
hours after Wilson was last seen in Healey. A passing traveler,
perhaps a hunter or ATV rider, had discovered the Ford
focus and more alarmingly, had found the two year old
child still locked inside. Based on the evidence, troopers believed

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the child had been alone in that car for approximately
two days, trapped in the July heat and cold of
the Alaskan summer, with no food, no water, and no
understanding of why her caregiver had abandoned her. The image
is almost too terrible to contemplate. A toddler alone in
a car, watching through the windows as the hours passed,

(44:59):
crying for someone who would never return. Stay tuned for
more Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages.
The child was rescued and transported to Healey, where she
was found to be in remarkably good health despite her ordeal.
She was later placed in the custody of the Office
of Children's Services and eventually reunited with her mother. According

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to all accounts, she has made a full physical recovery.
The psychological impact of spending two days locked in a
car in the Alaskan wilderness, watching through the windows for
someone who would never return, is something only she will
ever truly know, and because she was only two years
old at the time, she may have no conscious memory
of those terrible hours at all. Perhaps that is a mercy.

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The discovery of the child triggered an immediate and massive
search operation. Within hours, troopers, park rangers, military personnel and
volunteer searchers were converging on the Stampede trail. They brought
helicopters equipped with thermal ima imaging drones capable of surveying
large areas quickly, all terrain vehicles to traverse the rough terrain,

(46:07):
and train search and rescue dogs whose noses could detect
human scent across vast distances. They searched the trail itself,
the surrounding forest, the riverbanks and valleys. They looked for
any sign of Mary Dawn Wilson, footprints, clothing, personal effects,
anything that might indicate which direction she had gone or

(46:28):
what had happened to her. They found something, but not much.
Approximately one mile further down the Stampede trail from where
the car was stuck, at around the seven point eight
mile marker searchers discovered personal items believed to belong to Wilson.
The official reports don't specify exactly what was found, describing

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them only as clothing and personal belongings. The discovery confirmed
one crucial fact. Wilson had indeed been walking in the
direction away from the highway deeper into the wilderness, at
least for that first mile. Beyond that point, the trail
went cold. The items were scattered along the trail, not
arranged deliberately, but not torn or damaged in any obvious way.

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It was as if Wilson had dropped them as she walked,
or perhaps set them down and continued without them. The
searchers faced a cruel adversary rain. In the hours and
days after Wilson's disappearance, rain had fallen on the stampede trail,
washing away any footprints that might have indicated her path.
The soft ground that would normally preserve tracks had been

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transformed into a muddy mess that revealed nothing. The search dogs,
normally reliable at tracking human scent, found nothing useful. The
scent trail, if there had been one, had been dispersed
by the rain and the passage of time. The helicopters
and drones scanning the dense forest from above spotted no
sign of a lost woman. The vegetation was too thick,

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the terrain too broken to allow for EA Z visual
detection of someone on the ground. Ground teams pushed into
the surrounding wilderness, calling Wilson's name, looking for any indication
of her passage. They searched along game trails and creek beds,
through dense thickets, and across boggy meadows. They found nothing.
Not a footprint, not a piece of clothing, not a

(48:20):
mark on a tree that might indicate someone had passed by.
Mary Dawn Wilson had walked away from her car and
simply ceased to exist, leaving behind only a handful of
belongings scattered on a muddy trail. The search effort was
extraordinary in its scope and intensity. Village public safety officers
joined the operation, along with members of Solstice Search Dogs,

(48:42):
MATSU Search and Rescue, Alaska Wilderness Search and Rescue, Alaska
State Troopers, Alaska Wildlife Troopers, and the Alaska State Troopers
helicopter unit known as HILO. Two military assets were deployed,
including sophisticated aerial search technology. Volunteers from the local community,
many of whom knew the stampede trail, intimately joined the effort.

(49:06):
For three days, dozens of professional and volunteer searchers combed
the area looking for any trace of Marry Don Wilson.
They represented some of the most experienced search and rescue
personnel in Alaska, people who had found lost hikers in
seemingly impossible circumstances, who had located crash survivors in remote valleys,
who knew the Alaskan wilderness as well as anyone alive.

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They found nothing more. After her personal items were discovered
a mile from the car, not a single additional clue
or piece of evidence was located. No clothing, no footprints,
no sign of a camp or shelter, no body, no bones,
no evidence of a struggle or an attack. Mary don
Wilson had simply ceased to exist somewhere in the Alaskan wilderness,

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leaving behind only a stuck car, a traumatized child, and
a handful of belonging scattered on a muddy trail. The searchers,
experienced as they were, had no explanation for the completeness
of her disappearance. On July sixteenth, just three days after
the search began, Alaska State troopers announced a change in strategy.

(50:14):
They were transitioning from an active search to what they
called a reactive search mode. This was a difficult but
necessary decision, driven by the complete lack of new evidence
or clues since discovering her vehicle and clothing on the
first day. The official statement read, no further clues or
evidence have been located. Troopers, vpsos, park rangers, military aerial assets,

(50:39):
train search and rescue dogs, helicopters, drones, ATVs, and more
have put significant effort into the search during the active
search period. Due to the lack of new search areas
and no new discoveries of clues or information, Beginning today,
troopers will change from an active search strategy to a
reactive search strategy. The statement went on to note that

(51:02):
there was no evidence of foul play associated with Wilson's disappearance.
If new information came to light, the active search would resume.
Until then, the case would remain open, but essentially dormant,
waiting for some piece of evidence that might point searchers
in a new direction. The message was clear, the Alaska
State Troopers had done everything they could and they had

(51:24):
come up empty. Mary down Wilson was gone, and unless
something changed, she would remain gone. The search was officially
called off on July eighteenth, though the case has never
been closed. Mary Dawn Wilson remains listed as a missing person,
her information recorded in the National Missing and Unidentified Person

(51:44):
System under case number MP ninety three THOY four hundred
and thirty six. The Charlie Project, which profiles missing persons cases,
maintains a page on her disappearance, updated periodically as new
information becomes available. Tips can still be submitted to the
Alaska State Troopers at nine oh seven four five one

(52:05):
five one, or anonymously through the ak tip's smartphone app.
Anyone with information about Wilson or her location is encouraged
to contact authorities, but as time passes, hope fades. If
Wilson is still alive, she has now been missing for
more than two years, surviving alone in the Alaskan wilderness

(52:26):
without shelter, supplies, or contact with the outside world. This
seems extremely unlikely for anyone, let alone a sixty nine
year old woman of small stature. The far more probable
scenario is that Wilson died somewhere in the wilderness beyond
the stampede trail. Her remains hidden by the dense vegetation,
buried by weather, or scattered by wildlife. The Alaskan wilderness

(52:50):
is notoriously efficient at reclaiming it's dead. Bones become scattered
by scavengers, Clothing disintegrates in the harsh conditions, and within
a few seasons even a substantial body can become virtually undetectable,
absorbed back into the land that claimed it. If she
were found, it would not solve the central mystery of
her case. Why did she drive down the stampede trail

(53:13):
in the first place. Why did she continue so far
beyond where a sensible driver would turn back. Why when
her car became stuck did she walk deeper into the
wilderness rather than back toward the highway? And most puzzling
of all, why did she leave a two year old
child locked in the car alone and helpless for what

(53:33):
turned out to be two days. These questions have no
official answers, and speculation can only take us so far.
Wilson may have been experiencing a medical emergency, perhaps a
stroke or cardiac event, that impaired her judgment and orientation.
Strokes can cause severe confusion, leading people to make decisions
that seem completely irrational to outside observers. She may have

(53:57):
believed she was walking toward help when she was at
actually walking away from it. She may have become disoriented
by the terrain, which can be confusing even for experienced outdoorsmen,
and lost track of which direction led back to the highway,
Or there might be another explanation entirely. Those who knew
Wilson reported that she was a rugged Alaska type, familiar

(54:19):
with backcountry survival and accustomed to living off the land.
She had spent time in remote areas before, and knew
how to handle herself in the wilderness. This was not
a naive tourist wandering into danger without understanding the risks.
This was someone who should have known better, someone who
should have turned back when the road got rough, someone

(54:39):
who should have walked toward the highway rather than away
from it. The fact that she did none of these
things suggests that something was very wrong, either with her
mental or physical state, or with the situation she found
herself in. And then there are those who point to
the location itself. The Stampede Trail, after all, is no
ordinary road. It's a place where death has visited before,

(55:02):
where Chris McCandless starve to death in an abandoned bus,
where pilgrims have drowned and swollen rivers, where the wilderness
seems to actively resist human intrusion. It's a place within
the Alaska Triangle, that mysterious region where sixteen thousand people
have vanished over the past four decades. It's a place
where the tlingt warnings about the Kushtaka don't seem quite

(55:24):
so far fetched, where the stories of hairy men and
shape shifters carry an uncomfortable weight. Those who research bigfoot
sightings in Alaska have documented numerous encounters in the region
around Denali National Park, the very area where the stampede
trail lies. Witnesses have reported seeing massive bipedal creatures covered
in dark fur, creatures that move with an intelligence and

(55:47):
purposefulness that sets them apart from any known wildlife. Strange
howls have been heard echoing through the valleys, sounds that
don't match any animal on record. Hikers have reported feeling
watte followed by something that stays just out of sight
in the tree line. Could marry Don Wilson have encountered
something like this? Could she have been lured away from

(56:09):
her vehicle by sounds or sights that seem to promise help,
only to find something far stranger and far more dangerous.
These are questions without answers, speculations that may never be
confirmed or denied. What we know for certain is that
Mary Don Wilson, a sixty nine year old grandmother who
knew the Alaskan wilderness, drove down a road famous for

(56:30):
claiming lives, got stuck in the mud, locked a two
year old child in her car, and walked into the forest,
never to be seen again. Her case remains officially unsolved.
One more name added to the long and terrible list
of those who have vanished into Alaska's endless wilderness. There's
a particular kind of silence in the Alaskan wilderness. It's

(56:52):
not the absence of sounds so much as the presence
of something else, a weight in the air that seems
to absorb noise and attention alone. Like search and rescue
workers have described it, the sense of oppressive quiet that
descends without warning. Some have reported feeling watched, followed, or
observed by something they couldn't see. Others have described strange sounds,

(57:15):
footsteps that weren't their own, whispers that seemed to come
from everywhere and nowhere at once, cameras with final blurred frames,
GPS devices showing normal paths that suddenly stop. Evidence appears,
but the people never do. The rational mind dismisses these
reports as the products of stress, exhaustion, and over active imagination,

(57:37):
but the reports persist from people who are trained to
remain calm under pressure, who have spent their careers in
challenging environments, who know the difference between genuine anomalies and
the tricks that tired minds can play. They come back
from searches troubled by things they cannot explain, by the
sense that something was very wrong in those forests, by

(57:58):
the feeling that they were searching in because whatever had
taken the missing person was not going to give them back.
Climate change is slowly transforming Alaska's wilderness, melting glaciers that
have stood for millennia and revealing secrets long buried beneath
the ice. In recent years, aircraft wreckage from decades past
has begun to emerge from retreating glaciers, offering closure to

(58:22):
families who never knew what happened to their loved ones.
Investigators believe that over the next fifteen years, the Triangle
might finally give up a few of its secrets, as
more ice melts and more hidden graves are exposed. Perhaps
among these discoveries will be the final resting place of
some of the sixteen thousand souls who vanished into this

(58:43):
unforgiving land. Perhaps we will find the wreckage of hail
Bogs's plain still waiting after more than fifty years, to
tell its story. But the melting ice is creating new
hazards even as it reveals old ones. The terrain is
becoming less stable, less predictable, more dangerous in ways that
even experienced outdoorsmen may not anticipate. Permafrost is thawing, causing

(59:07):
the ground itself to shift and settle in unpredictable ways.
Glacial lakes are forming and draining, suddenly creating flood hazards
that didn't exist a generation ago. The mystery isn't shrinking,
it's evolving, adapting to new conditions while maintaining its essential character.
Alaska remains hungry, and it will continue to claim its

(59:29):
tribute of human lives for as long as there are
humans willing to venture into its depths. Mary Dawn Wilson
may never be found, like so many before her. She
may remain forever missing her final moments and final resting place,
known only to the wilderness that claimed her. The little
girl she left behind will grow up without answers, carrying

(59:50):
a trauma she may never fully understand. The case files
will sit in archives, periodically updated but never resolved. One
more folder among thousands of similar folders stretching back decades.
Stay tuned for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back.
After these messages, families will continue to wonder, to hope,

(01:00:13):
to grieve without the closure that a recovered body would provide,
and the stampede trail will remain what it has always been,
a road into mystery, a path that leads from the
familiar world into something far stranger and more dangerous. The
Magic Bus may be gone, relocated to a museum where
visitors can experience its history safely, but the magic, if

(01:00:36):
that's the right word for it, still lingers in those
forests and valleys. Something waits out there, in the shadows
between the trees, in the spaces where the fog rolls
down from the mountains, in the silence that swallows sound
and memory alike. The indigenous peoples knew, they've always known.
They gave names to what lurks in the darkness, Kushtaka,

(01:01:00):
nante nach Milukayulik. They warned their children to stay close
to home, to travel in groups, to fear the fog
in the forest edge. They spoke of beings that could
take the shape of relatives to deceive the unwary, that
emitted strange sounds to lure victims to their doom, that
prevented the souls of the taken from ever finding peace.

(01:01:21):
Modern skeptics dismiss these warnings as primitive superstition, the fearful
imaginings of people who didn't understand the natural world. But
those same skeptics cannot explain why so many disappear, why
so few are ever found, Why the wilderness seems to
consume its victims so completely that even trained searchers with
modern technology cannot locate a single trace. Perhaps there are

(01:01:45):
things in Alaska that science has not yet cataloged, creatures
or forces that exist outside our understanding of the natural world.
Perhaps the sixteen thousand missing souls were taken by something
we don't have a name for, something that watch from
the shadows and waits for the vulnerable, the lost, the alone.
Perhaps Mary Don Wilson, walking deeper into the wilderness on

(01:02:08):
that July afternoon, encountered one of these things and was
simply taken, transformed, absorbed into the vast and ancient consciousness
of the land itself. Or perhaps the explanation is simpler,
If no less terrible. Perhaps Alaska is exactly what it
appears to be, a vast, beautiful, utterly indifferent wilderness that

(01:02:31):
kills without malice or intention, that buries its dead without
marker or ceremony, that erases human presence as casually as
a wave smooths footprints on a beach. Perhaps there is
no monster, no shape shifter, no supernatural force at work.
Perhaps there is only the land itself, ancient and cold

(01:02:51):
and completely uninterested in whether we live or die. Perhaps
the disappearances are nothing more than the natural consequence of
humans venturing into a place where humans were never meant
to be, suffering the inevitable result of their hubris and
their curiosity. Either explanation is terrifying in its own way.
Either explanation demands respect, caution, and humility from anyone who

(01:03:15):
ventures into Alaska's wild places, and either explanation leaves us
with the same unsettling truth. The wilderness keeps its secrets,
and those who disappear into its depths are seldom returned.
The land takes what it wants when it wants, and
it gives nothing back in exchange. The trail waits, the

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forest watches, and the silence continues, broken only by the
whisper of wind through ancient trees, the distant cry of
something that may or may not be an animal, and
the endless, patient breathing of a land that has swallowed
thousands before and will surely swallow thousands more. If you're
out there, somewhere beyond the reach of maps and satellites

(01:03:58):
and search parties, may you find peace. And if something
found you instead, may it be known someday so that
others might understand what waits in the darkness of the
last frontier. Consider for a moment the strangeness of Mary
Wilson's actions. Here was a woman who, by all accounts,
understood the Alaskan wilderness. She had lived in remote areas,

(01:04:20):
had survived in conditions that would defeat most people. She
knew what the Stampede trail was, knew its reputation, knew
what had happened to others who had ventured down that
road unprepared. And yet she drove a forward focus a
vehicle utterly unsuited for such terrain, nearly seven miles into
the back country with a toddler in the back seat.

(01:04:41):
When the car inevitably became stuck, she didn't do what
any rational person would do, walk back toward the highway
flag down help get the child to safety. Instead, she
walked deeper into the wilderness, leaving the child locked in
the car. There's another possibility, one that fits uncomfortably in
into the pattern of disappearances that have plagued the Alaska

(01:05:02):
Triangle for decades. What if Wilson saw something? What if
as she drove down the stampede trail, she encountered something
that demanded her attention, something that drew her further and
further from safety. What if when her car became stuck,
that something was still there, still calling to her, still
pulling her deeper into the trees. The Tlingett legends speak

(01:05:26):
of the Kushtaka's ability to mimic human voices, to appear
as familiar faces, to lure victims away from safety with
promises of help or reunification with loved ones. What if
Wilson believed she was following someone she knew, someone who
would lead her to safety, never realizing until too late
that she was being led to her doom. This is speculation,

(01:05:50):
of course, There's no evidence that Wilson encountered anything supernatural
on the stampede trail. There's no evidence of anything at
all beyond a stuck car and some scattered longings. But
the absence of evidence is itself a kind of evidence.
In Alaska, where so many disappear so completely that even
exhaustive searches find nothing, the wilderness here doesn't just kill people.

(01:06:13):
It erases them, removes them from existence as thoroughly as
if they had never been. And that pattern of complete erasure,
repeated thousands of times over the decades, suggests something more
systematic than mere accidents and natural hazards. The small town
of Nome, located on the western coast of Alaska, experienced

(01:06:34):
a cluster of disappearance is so severe that the FBI
launched a formal investigation. From nineteen sixty to two thousand
and four, twenty four people vanished from this remote community,
a staggering number for a town with a population of
only a few thousand. The FBI looked into the possibility
of a serial killer, someone preying on the vulnerable residence

(01:06:56):
of this isolated community. What they found instead was a
pat pattern of alcohol abuse and wilderness exposure. People would
drink too much, wander away from safety, and succumb to
the elements. Case closed, or so the official report suggested,
But residents of Nome weren't entirely satisfied with this explanation.

(01:07:16):
They pointed to cases that didn't fit the pattern, disappearances
of people who weren't drunk, who weren't known to wander,
who simply vanished under circumstances that defied easy explanation. They
spoke of strange lights in the sky, unusual sounds in
the wilderness, the feeling of being watched that pervaded certain
areas around the town. Whether these reports reflect genuine phenomena

(01:07:40):
or the collective anxiety of a community traumatized by loss
is impossible to say. What's certain is that GNOME's disappearances,
like so many others in Alaska, left behind more questions
than answers. The phenomenon of Alaska's missing isn't limited to
remote wilderness areas. People have vanished from populars, from the

(01:08:01):
outskirts of cities, from places where you would think safety
would be assured. A field researcher named Ken Gerhard, who
investigated disappearances in the Alaska Triangle, recalled two people going
missing even while he was conducting his research. One disappeared
off a cruise ship, vanishing from a vessel surrounded by
witnesses and surveillance cameras. The other had been on a

(01:08:23):
very crowded tourist area on top of a mountain, surrounded
by dozens of other people, and simply ceased to be.
These cases defy the standard explanations of wilderness hazards and
getting lost. Something else seems to be at work, something
that can take people even from the midst of crowds
and civilization. Travelers in the Alaska Triangle have reported experiences

(01:08:45):
that don't fit into any conventional framework. They describe moments
when their aircraft felt pulled or off track, even with
everything functioning normally. They described forests that seemed to shift
and change, trails that lead nowhere, of disorientation that goes
beyond simple navigation errors. They describe the silence that oppressive

(01:09:06):
quiet that searchers have noted, a silence that seems to
have weight and presence, that seems to be listening. And
they describe the feeling of being watched, of having attracted
the attention of something that prefers to remain unseen. Whether
these experiences represent genuine paranormal phenomena, psychological effects of stress

(01:09:27):
and isolation, or something else entirely is a question that
may never be definitively answered. What can be said with
certainty is that Alaska is different from other places, that
its wilderness operates by rules. We don't fully understand that
people who venture into its depths are taking risks that
go beyond the obvious dangers of terrain and weather in wildlife.

(01:09:50):
There's a reason the indigenous peoples develop such elaborate systems
of taboos and protections. There's a reason they warned their
children about the Kushtaka and the nonte knock and the
hairy Man. They knew something that modern visitors often forget.
The wilderness is not neutral ground. It has its own agenda,
its own appetites, its own way of dealing with those

(01:10:11):
who trespass into its domain. Mary Dawn Wilson trespassed into
that domain on July twelfth, twenty twenty two. She drove
past the point where caution should have stopped her, kept
going past the point where common sense should have made
her turn back, and finally walked away from the last
trace of safety into a wilderness that was waiting to

(01:10:31):
receive her. We don't know what she found out there
in the trees. We don't know if she succumbed to exposure,
to injury, to predators, or to something stranger. Still, we
know only that she is gone, that she left behind
a child who will never understand what happened, and that
her case joins thousands of others in the long and
terrible catalog of Alaska's missing. The Stampede Trail continues to

(01:10:56):
draw visitors, even without the magic bus that once served
as it it's primary attraction. Some come seeking adventure, others
seeking solitude, still others seeking to understand what happened to
Chris McCandless and the many who followed him into the wilderness.
They should know what they're walking into. They should know
that this trail has claimed lives before and will likely

(01:11:18):
claim lives again. They should know that search parties have
walked these paths and found nothing, That the forest here
keeps its secrets with a tenacity that borders on malevolence.
If you go, tell someone where you're headed, bring supplies
for longer than you expect to be out. Know how
to read the weather, how to cross rivers safely, how

(01:11:39):
to signal for help, carry bear spray and know how
to use it, and pay attention to the feelings you
get out there in the trees. If something tells you
to turn back, turn back. If something draws you deeper
into the wilderness towards sounds that shouldn't be there or
lights that have no source, resist that pull. The wilderness

(01:11:59):
is always hungry. It doesn't need another name on its
list of the lost. And perhaps if we can learn
what happened to mary Don Wilson, we can learn something
about all the others, the sixteen thousand in counting, who
have walked into Alaska's wilderness and never returned. Perhaps we
can find the thread that connects these cases, the pattern

(01:12:19):
that explains why so many vanish so completely in this
particular place, at this particular time. Perhaps we can finally
understand what the indigenous peoples have always known, what the
land itself has been trying to tell us since long
before the first European explorers arrived on these shores. Until then,
the mystery remains. The Alaska Triangle continues to claim its victims.

(01:12:44):
The forest watches and waits, and somewhere out there in
the vast and terrible silence of the last frontier. The
answers lie buried, waiting for someone brave enough or foolish
enough to find them. Di