Episode 106: Nantiinaq: Alaska’s Killer Bigfoot

If stories like this send you running for the hills, maybe just make sure the fog has cleared before you go...

Episode Transcript

Scattered across the continental United States, roughly 3,800 ghost towns lie in decay. Decomposing between the trees of the Appalachias, simply left to rot along the windswept grasslands of the western plains, these decrypted townships serve as eerie time capsules--acting as window into haunts gone by. 

Of course the phrase ghost town is somewhat of a misnomer. Truth be told, these towns are more often than not passed off as tourist traps. On rarer occasions, like in the case of centralia, pa (which we discussed back in episode 57), some ghost towns even pose a threat to society. And so, these so called time capsules are not so much a place to hunt for ghosts, so much as they are a threat to your wallet or bodily well being.

And yet, you have to admit, there's something about the idea of town devoid of any living residents that inspires a sense of intrigue. Maybe its the liminality of it all--I mean, there really isn't much more haunting, more ambiguous, than stepping into a space that should be rife with people only to be met with the sound of your own footsteps. 

I guess in a place like that, it would be easy to mistake those footsteps for the stalking sounds of something darker, more mysterious. You might even think the ringing of defening silence in your ears is an actual audible noise thats emanating out from just beyond the treeline. 

Because here, in towns as menacing as centralia, as quiet bannack, montana, or even as remote as portlock, AK, its hard not to feel threatened by the eerie solitude of a decaying ghost town. Its almost enough to make you wonder, what caused its residents to flee in the first place, and maybe question if you too should go running for the hills. 

I'm courtney hayes and youre listening to haunts. Stay tuned... 

Up until it was abandoned in the 1940s, Portlock, AK was by all accounts a quiet little community. With humble beginnings as a native settlement, this township on the Kenai Peninsula was first explored by a nomadic group of Inuits. 

With an abundance of fish and wildlife, life in what eventually became Portlock was good—or at least it was for a time. But for one reason or another these nomadic people eventually took on ventures in other parts of the Alaskan wilderness.

Following to their brief occupation, portlock was the temporary home for a group of Spanish explorers. That is until they too abandoned the settlement after a violent illness spread through their ranks. Evidently, an abundance of fresh fish wasn’t all that appetizing between the bouts of nausea and in the face of the impending Alaskan winter the Spanish explorers set their sights on warmer climates. 

For a time after that, the area was occupied by a party of English settlers—the likes of which had been lead by one Captain Nathaniel Portlock. And of course it is he who bears the town‘s namesake.

That said, it’s worth mentioning that portlock was never a sprawling city. At least according to its limited census data, it only had 31 residents at most and the township itself was never incorporated. But it was there that those 31 people made a home for themselves—laying roots that they thought would stand in the test of time.

It’s sad when you think about it. That those plans made never fully came to fruition, that the dreams they saw just beyond the horizon turned out to be much further beyond their reach. Because it wasn’t over-fishing as you might expect or even the incredibly cruel winters of the Alaskan wilderness that sent those 31 residents out of portlock. Or so the stories claim.

Instead, life in this quiet corner of Alaska came to an untimely end in the face of something a lot more monstrous. And so it was the legend of this mass exodus that inspired this ghost town's well ghostly reputation.

As it turns out, Portlock has a long-standing history of hosting sickly residents. Of course, we already knew about the Spanish explorers—that it was some sort of violent and mysterious illness that sent them packing out of portlock. But what about the English settlers who came after them?

Well, let’s just say they didn’t have all the information that we do. In fact when they were first settling on the kenai in 1785, they couldn’t have known that just six years prior the area was inhabited by the Spanish. 

They surely wouldn’t have thought that this encampment that they had found rather serendipitously had functioned more like a sanitarium for their Spanish predecessors. So while it came as a shock to Nathaniel Portlock and his men, it shouldn’t surprise any of us that they too fell ill. 

To make matters worse, the settlers started to hear things in the dead of night. Echoing out from the forest surrounding the village came to sound of crying and wailing. It was the same morose sort of noise that they themselves made when that mysterious illness started to take hold.

I can imagine that it would’ve sounded sort of menacing, but if you can believe it, it was what they couldn’t hear that posed an even bigger threat. So some researchers and historians believe, apparently this illness they were all experiencing had been the result of exposure to infrasound. 

Pause 

Okay so that might sound a little kooky. But to be honest, this low pitched frequency, though inaudible to human ears, is actually quite common out in nature. Several mammals, including elephants, whales, and rhinos, use infrasound as a means of communication. Then there are a handful of predators like tigers, for example that use it to disorient their prey when they roar. 

All of this is to say, it’s quite possible that the various groups who once inhabited the now abandoned town of Portlock were simply exposed to the deafening silence of mother nature. And if that were the case, they would’ve almost certainly experienced an odd array of symptoms.

Inner ear imbalances, vertigo, nausea, vomiting, even bowel spasms. You know, all the hallmarks of this violent and mysterious affliction that ravaged the people of Portlock for over a decade—perhaps even longer than that.

So I guess the affliction itself, while definitely violent, really wasn't all that mysterious after all. In fact, the only mystery here is what sort of predator may have made these silent noises in the first place. 

The year was 1867, a good 100 years after Nathaniel Portlock and his men were subjected to the mysterious epidemic that plagued the settlement of Portlock. At that point, a new community of Sugpiaq set up a camp on the coast of the peninsula—over joyed by the abundance of fish and prismatic setting they had discovered. 

Still as it was for the settlers who came before them, this joyous discovery was short lived. Except instead of bouts of the nausea and dizziness that had tormented their predecessors, these settlers were targeted by something a lot more concrete—though still quite mysterious. 

You see, after only a month there in portlock this new community was attacked. On a near nightly occasion, what they described as giant cannibals raided their village with a sort of animalistic savagery that the Sugpiaq had never been accustomed to.

As the attacks became more and more common, the Sugpiaq felt the need to give these beasts a name. And given their ape-like appearance, there was really only one thing they could think to call them: Nantiinaq, or rather the hairy man.

Pause

Now at least in the beginning, the Sugpiaq fought back against these beasts. You see, unlike the settlers who came before them they felt that portlock was their permanent home instead of a temporary stop along a much greater adventure. They had plenty to eat, and the bay offered protection from the turbulent waters of the pacific. So it’s not like they were going to give all that up without a fight.

Still anytime game became scarce these hairy men from the trees made their way into Portlock. And, at least according to the San Francisco chronicle, these beasts would then quote: “Rip people to shreds in the streets.” 

Now that at least in my opinion sounds more like a sensationalized news headline more than anything else. But it’s worth mentioning that by 1905, the Sugpiaq had ultimately laid down their arms, giving up their fight for good. And so the town of Portlock was abandoned once more.

I don’t know about any of you, but when I think of Sasquatch, Yeti’s, Scunk Apes and the like, I hardly ever picture anything like the events I’ve just described to you. Sure there might be a few blurry photographs circling the internet, along with stories of chance encounters against a bipedal beast that lurks in the remote reaches of the Pacific Northwest. But rarely if ever do we hear about such encounters coming out of fully fledged towns and communities.

No matter how isolated those communities may be, it’s not like anyone’s ever seen bigfoot standing in line at a local coffee joint. And yet, by the time that a group of Russian-Alutiiq people settled in Portlock in the 1920s, you would’ve thought that sightings of this nature were a common occurrence.

In fact, as the Alutiiqs began setting up a school, a post office, and even a salmon cannery which should’ve created a sense of stability that Portlock had never seen, they also began to draft a list of strict guidelines. Rules that for all intents and purposes were meant to protect Portlock residents from Nantiinaq.

I guess you could say it was pretty straightforward. Mainly, Portlock locals were expected to accommodate a nightly curfew, armed guards patrolled the streets on rotation, oh and under no circumstances were they ever permitted to venture out into the forest—especially undercover a thick fog. Evidently the forest belonged to Nantiinaq and on foggy nights it may be inclined to stalk the streets of portlock too.

Pause

Now for a while, these rules were respected and as a result, no other sensationally gruesome headlines were written about Portlock. Well that is until 1931 when a man named Andrew Kamluck dropped his guard—venturing out into the woods with the intention of logging a few trees.

Once his neighbors realized he had been missing, they organized a search party. Only to find Andrew’s body out in the forest with his head crushed in. 

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After that, disappearances became quite common throughout Portlock. It started with those who had settled on the edge of the community—gold prospectors, herdsmen, and hunters mostly. But as time went on, it seemed like the assailant—whoever or whatever it may have been—was closing in on them. 

In fact, twice on fog covered nights, something broke into the cannery. On the second occasion, it caused enough chaos and damage to actually burn it to the ground. At that point, the sense of stability that it offered had all but vanished, along with 15 residents who had seemingly disappeared with the vapors of a lifting fog. 

So by the end of the 1940s, the people of Portlock were once again cutting their losses. And for all the stability and promise that it had once offered, the town of Portlock, Alaska has been left to decay ever since. 

If you were to visit Portlock today, you’d probably feel like you’ve stepped into an image frozen in time. This ghost town, as it were has really only been explored on occasion since the Alutiiq people left in the 40s, and what remains of the cannery, the school, and the post office have been standing, all but wasting away for over 100 years.

Still as you might expect, our story doesn’t end with that final flee from this supposedly safe haven. Instead, the legend lives on haunting those willing to brave a visit out to portlock on more modern expeditions. The likes of which have inspired shows like the discovery plus series entitled Alaskan killer Bigfoot. 

Still, nothing is quite as compelling as stories that have been shared between the Alutiiq people, many of whom still live in the more populated areas of the Kenai Peninsula. So as we bring this episode to a close, let’s focus lens on an incident that unfolded back in 1989. 

According to the testimony of a local paramedic, that was the year he had responded to a rather peculiar call. At first, nothing really seemed all that out of the ordinary. An elderly gentleman, who lived in one of the more remote parts of the Kenai Peninsula, had had a heart attack while out on a walk and was now in need of immediate medical attention. 

Now upon arriving at the scene, the paramedic realized that this man lived fairly close to that old cannery town—the one with such a ghostly reputation. Not to mention that he was a member of the Alutiiq tribe, he knew of the history and of the legends that had taken root beneath this thick canopy of pine.

So as he sat there with his patient, trying to breathe life back into the man’s senses, the paramedic began to question him on what he may have seen. In doing so, the man went from pained to panicked. And in the moment before the light left his eyes, he pointed to the tree line—as if there was some terror lying in wait just beyond their view. 

Pause

Now, if you’ve been listening to the show since its inception, you probably know that Cryptids on the whole are not exactly my cup of tea. And I’d be willing to bet that I’m not alone in this camp. After all those blurry photographs I mentioned earlier never do seem to focus, do they?

And yet, the legends and the stories live on, sometimes even longer than the place they were born to, always inspiring that haunting sort of ambiguity you can only find in a ghost town. 

So in the end, it almost doesn’t matter why it’s residents left it to decay in the first place, so long as you know that some legends—even ones as sensationalized as this—hold at least a bit of truth. 

I guess what I’m trying to say is that should you go running for the hills—if this legend and this town are even worth fleeing at all—maybe just make sure the fog has cleared before you go. 

Sources:

https://blackbeastsandboogeymen.com/2023/01/26/the-curse-of-portlock-an-alaskan-killer-bigfoot/