(A) Hairy Man of Portlock Alaska and Port Chatham Cannery | Archive Ep48

[00:00:04] Up north, there's a place called the Great Land where animals outnumber people, majestic mountains soar, glistening glaciers roar, and nature reigns supreme. This is Alaska. It's true that Alaska is a wonderland for adventurers and vacationers alike.

[00:00:29] In fact, if there was ever a place that could be as awe-inspiring as it is mysterious, I have little doubt that Alaska would be at the top of my list. In many ways, Alaska symbolizes the pinnacle of what Mother Nature has to offer, and yet

[00:00:44] for some, the vastness of the last frontier is an unsettling reminder of the bizarre secrets that lie hidden deep within its forests and mountains. Many people have come to believe that its majestic landscape disguises a terrifying truth that some of its residents claim to have experienced firsthand.

[00:01:05] While these experiences aren't typical of standard animal attacks or missing persons reports, they do seem to point to a much more vicious yet unknown creature that is believed to abduct and in some cases brutally murder and dismember its prey.

[00:01:20] These cases have compounded over the decades, but there's a particular string of events that are so unique, so well-documented, and so horrifying, that they deserve a place amongst the strangest unexplained incidents to ever occur.

[00:01:36] Incidents that most believers say were caused by none other than the Hairy Man of Port Chatham, Alaska. The first time it happened I was sleeping and woke up because I felt a hand on my leg and I realized that I couldn't move.

[00:01:55] And he come across this object on the ground which was the shape of a flying saucer, so he jumped out of his pickup and went down there and there was four beings laying on the ground.

[00:02:05] When I raised my head back up, I was turning my head and out of my peripheral vision I seen something hop to a tree. And it was tall, about seven, eight foot tall, it was black, real hairy, like a gorilla.

[00:02:33] Welcome to the Paranormal Mysteries Podcast, I am your host, Nick Ryan. On January 3rd, 1959, President Eisenhower signed a special proclamation turning the territory of Alaska into the 49th state. Today it proudly holds the title of being the largest state in the Union with over 663,000 square miles.

[00:02:58] Glaciers, national parks, wildlife, and seemingly endless wilderness are but a few of the many things that the land of the midnight sun is famous for. It also boasts the highest point in all of the US thanks to Mount Denali in Denali National Park at an elevation of 20,320 feet.

[00:03:20] With just over 730,000 citizens living in the state, the amount of caribou outnumber people by approximately 220,000. With so much land and such little impact from humans, the majority of its terrain remains untouched and pristine. Alaska is home to over 430 species of birds, 70 species of mammals, the largest population

[00:03:45] of bald eagles in the nation, and the highest concentration of brown bears in the world. From pygmy shrews that weigh less than a penny to gray whales that weigh up to 45 tons, even species that are endangered elsewhere can still be abundant in Alaska.

[00:04:03] It's estimated that out of Alaska's 365 million acres, only about 160,000 are touched by civilization, leaving the rest of the state virtually uninhabited. For me, this begs the question of what might be out there that we haven't yet discovered.

[00:04:23] Approximately 150 miles southwest of Anchorage lies the Kenai Peninsula and what is now the ghost town of Port Chatham. Adjacent to Port Chatham was the once thriving Port Lock Cannery. This location has become increasingly well known due to a bizarre string of missing person

[00:04:40] cases and unsolved murders that took place in the early to mid-20th century. While this now abandoned fishing village is the focus of today's episode, it's important to note that it's not the only location within Alaska that has had a high number of missing people.

[00:04:57] In fact, the entire state has become somewhat of a hotspot for missing persons cases. Since records started being kept in 1988, over 60,000 people have been reported missing, and it's estimated that over 2,000 people disappear each year, which is twice the national average.

[00:05:16] Many believe that these disappearances are simply due to Alaska's extreme terrain and weather and in many cases, inexperience of the person that has gone missing. That being said, the events surrounding Port Chatham and the Port Lock Cannery are unique

[00:05:32] and I'd like to give you a little history of the area leading up to its unexplained evacuation. John Nathaniel Portlock, a member of the British Royal Navy, found sanctuary in Port Chatham in 1786 during his Alaska expedition and he praised the site.

[00:05:50] In 1911, the Seldovia Salmon Company built the first cannery in Lower Cook Inlet, located at Seldovia, a town that had been in existence for more than 30 years. In 1912, the Fidalgo Island Packing Company built a cannery at Port Graham, and three

[00:06:08] years later, a cold storage facility for cod and halibut was constructed in Port Chatham and named after Captain Portlock. The Russian Aleut village of Port Chatham grew around the cannery, and by all accounts,

[00:06:23] it was quaint, tidy, and in a beautiful setting, nestled between the sea and vistas of snow-covered peaks, and in 1921, a post office was finally established in the village. The English Bay, Port Graham, and Seldovia Canneries obtained their fish either from

[00:06:41] nearby fish traps or from fishing boats that stayed fairly close to Kachemak Bay. In 1928, a new cannery was built in Portlock, and a larger facility was constructed there in 1930. The new Portlock Cannery, with more seaworthy fishing vessels, resulted in the exploitation

[00:07:00] of the fisheries in Windy Bay, Rocky Bay, Port Dick, and other outer Kenai Peninsula sites. According to early settlers, the area around Port Chatham was believed to be home to an evil spirit. In fact, many believed that the entity or entities would stalk their every move.

[00:07:20] However, unlike the ghostly spirits that we think of today, the spirit residing on the Kenai Peninsula was described as being a massive, hairy, man-like creature that walked on two legs. Shortly after the post office was built in 1921, there were reports of the spirit or

[00:07:38] creature haunting the nearby mining camp, Chrome, which remains abandoned to this day. As witnesses continued coming forward, many people said that they found a number of trees throughout the area that had been completely ripped out of the ground and turned upside

[00:07:53] down, with the roots facing up into the air. This was thought to be more proof that whatever this evil creature was, it was far too powerful for any human or village to stop. Bizarre sightings and a feeling of unease blanketed the forest surrounding the Portlock

[00:08:10] Cannery and nearby village of Port Chatham, but it wasn't until the early 1930s that the strange activity in the area seemed to take a turn for the worse. In 1931, a logger named Andrew Camlock had been out working in the forest.

[00:08:27] After not returning at the end of the day, searchers went looking for the missing logger. They came upon Camlock's lifeless body lying on the ground with what appeared to be a severe head injury.

[00:08:38] As they scoured the scene, they saw that a large piece of logging equipment that was over 10 feet away from the body also had blood on it. The searchers believed that the equipment would have to have been picked up and swung

[00:08:51] at Camlock in order to inflict such damage, and his body was too far away from it for him to have fallen on it and then collapsed. However, the logging equipment was so heavy that it would have taken multiple men just

[00:09:03] to lift it, let alone wield it as a weapon. Therefore, the men began to wonder if it was the creature of the forest that had lifted the machinery and attacked Andrew Camlock. Around the same time, Simeon Kvasnikov of nearby Port Graham said that a gold miner

[00:09:22] headed out for the day and just disappeared. No sign of the prospector was ever found. Some time later, Tom Larson went out to chop wood for fish traps when he saw something large and hairy on the beach.

[00:09:36] He ran back home for his rifle, and when he returned to the water's edge, the thing just stared at him. Larson was never able to explain why he didn't fire his rifle at it. Then in 1973, an Anchorage newspaper ran a piece on a retired schoolteacher who had

[00:09:54] taught in Port Chatham during World War II. She told stories of cannery workers who went into the mountains to hunt dull sheep and bear, but never returned. Search parties found no trace of them. Then rumors spread that a mutilated body, torn and dismembered in a fashion that didn't

[00:10:13] resemble wounds from a bear attack, had been swept by rains down the mountain and into the lagoon and nearby rivers and trails. People also began disappearing out of nowhere and never returning home for years on end.

[00:10:28] In later years, hunters that were following signs of a moose came across man-like footprints that exceeded 18 inches in length. As they closed on the moose, they realized that they and the owner of the large footprints were tracking the same animal.

[00:10:44] The hunters soon came across matted-down grass that showed indications of an apparent life and death struggle. Beyond the grass, the hunters found no moose tracks, but the large man-like footprints continued upward into the cloud-draped mountains.

[00:11:00] In an interview that ran in the October 2009 edition of the Homer Tribune, Nanuelek Elder, Melania Helen Kael, who was born in Port Chatham in 1934, gave insight into the demise of her hometown. She explained that her parents, along with the rest of the village, grew weary of being

[00:11:18] terrorized by a creature, the Aleut, called a Nantanak, meaning half-man, half-beast. Melania also told of the spirit of a woman dressed in draping black clothes that would come out of the cliffs. Her dress was so long she would have to drag it, Melania said.

[00:11:37] She had a very white face and would disappear back into the cliffs. She said that many of the residents refused to venture into the surrounding forests and over time abandoned their homes and the village school and moved up the coast to Port Graham.

[00:11:52] Only the postmaster remained in Port Chatham, but the post office eventually closed in 1950. Earlier records made by Portlock Cannery Management showed that the site had been vacated once before. The cannery supervisor noted that in 1905 all the native workers evacuated the area

[00:12:11] because of something in the forest, but they returned to work at the cannery the following year. The stories did not stop with the abandonment of the village. A goat hunter in 1968 claimed to have been chased by a creature while he was hunting in the area.

[00:12:27] In 1973, three hunters took shelter there during a three-day storm and claimed that each night something walked around their tent on what sounded like two feet. That story is as follows. In 1990, an Anchorage paramedic was called out to aid a 70-year-old native who had suffered

[00:12:46] a heart attack but was being incarcerated in the Eagle River Jail north of the city. While treating the man, the paramedic happened to mention that he had hunted in the area of Port Chatham. This is the paramedic's retelling of his conversation with the witness. He says,

[00:13:03] I don't belong to any UFO group or anything like that, but this actually happened to me. I've told a few trusted friends about it, but never bothered to write it down. I'll try to relate it as accurately as memory allows.

[00:13:16] In 1990, while I was working as a paramedic in Anchorage, we got a call out on an alarm for a man having a heart attack at the state jail in Eagle River.

[00:13:27] He was a native man in his 70s, and after I got him stabilized with IVs and O2 and cardiac drugs, my partner and I began to transport him to the native hospital in Anchorage.

[00:13:38] En route to the hospital, I had time to talk to this gentleman, who was an Aleut from the native village of Port Graham, a remote village on the lower end of Cook Inlet. Well, as usual with me, the topic eventually drifted to hunting and fishing, and I casually

[00:13:53] mentioned to him that I and two other hunting buddies were once weathered in at the upper lagoon of Dogfish Bay, only a few miles from his home in Port Graham. The lagoon was about as beautiful and wild a place as I have ever seen in my 35 years

[00:14:08] in Alaska. Well, when I said that I had spent some time in Dogfish, this old man sat up on the gurney and grabbed me by the front of my shirt. He got right up in my face and said, Did it bother you?

[00:14:21] Well, with that question, the hair stood up on the back of my head. I said, Yes. Did you see it? was his next question. I said, No. Did you see it? He said, No, but my brother seen it. It chased him.

[00:14:36] This old alley-ute and I were talking about the same thing, but we never used the word Bigfoot or Legend or anything like that, but we both knew what we were talking about. You see, in August of 1973, three of us were out bow hunting for goats and blackies in

[00:14:53] what was then the remote wilderness of Lower Cook Inlet, when a storm forced us to take shelter in Dogfish Bay Lagoon. We beached our skiff and let the tide run her dry. After a dinner of broiled salmon, we turned into our tent.

[00:15:09] Back in those days, the best tent I had was a dark green canvas job with a center pole and no windows or floor. We left the fire burning and cleaned the pots and pans so as not to attract any bear during the night and turned in.

[00:15:23] The sky was clear but the wind was howling through the old growth timber that lined the shore. Sometime around 2 a.m., my friend Dennis woke me up by squeezing my leg. I could dimly see his face in the tent. His finger was across his lips.

[00:15:39] I listened, then I heard it. A step. A man was quietly walking outside of our tent, taking very deliberate steps. Not a bear. Scenes from the movie Deliverance flashed through my mind.

[00:15:54] We woke Joe, the third member of our party, with the same leg grab and finger to the lips. The walking, or rather sneaking, continued until it half circled our tent and then all was quiet again, except for the wind.

[00:16:09] We had our bows and the 06 leaning against a tree outside of the tent, so somehow we talked Joe into belly crawling out of the tent to get the rifle. We were scared, I tell you. The next day and night, the storm continued to blow.

[00:16:23] We saw several black bears on the salmon stream at the head of the lagoon during the evening hunt, but had no chance for a shot. We didn't talk about what had happened last night.

[00:16:33] Too embarrassed, I guess, to be scared by a black bear that sounded like a man. We got back to camp early, built a big fire, sat around it, and ate dinner until around midnight. In August, there is still some light in the sky until about 10 or 11.

[00:16:48] I recall that we were all embarrassed about being afraid about the coming night. We had a flashlight and the rifle in the tent between us, locked and loaded. I finally dozed off, but woke right up when Dennis squeezed my leg.

[00:17:02] The illuminated hands of my watch showed that it was 2.30. Joe was already sitting up and had the rifle in hand. I heard the first step, not more than about 10 feet from the back of the tent. Slowly, then another, and another.

[00:17:18] Whatever this was, it sounded like it was walking on two feet. It made the semicircle around the tent. When we finally got enough courage to crawl out of the tent and turn on the flashlight, we saw nothing. No tracks. Nothing.

[00:17:32] The third night we decided if it bothered us again, we would come out of the tent shooting. We were actually scared. It never came back the third night, and the following day, we had a break in the weather and got the heck out of there.

[00:17:45] I never told anybody about the experience for several years until about 1979, when I happened to be reading an old Alaska sportsman magazine published in 1935. In the letters to the editor, a woman wrote that she recently found a letter written by

[00:18:00] some distant relative of hers who was a schoolteacher at the cannery in Portlock Bay, a rugged fjord adjacent to Dogfish Bay. The year was 1905. She quoted from the letter. It said that the cannery employed a small group of Aleuts from a small village in Portlock

[00:18:16] Bay during the salmon season. Their camp was about a mile from the cannery buildings. One day all the Aleuts moved out of the village and paddled their bedarkas back to Port Graham. The letter said that the Aleuts claimed that a hairy man was bothering and frightening them

[00:18:31] to the point where they had to leave. I have since done research into the subject and found written histories of natives from Seldovia to Port Graham being frightened and bothered by something. They even have a native name for it, but it doesn't translate into English very well.

[00:18:48] These accounts mostly take place during the first half of the 1900s and are native related, but not all. I talked to one guy who in 1968 got the bejeebers scared out of him while coming down an alder-choked gully while on a goat hunt in Portlock, Alaska.

[00:19:04] Most of these accounts precede the Bigfoot hype that began to appear in the 60s and 70s in the Northwest. Well, anyway, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. Ed. The terrifying history surrounding Port Chatham and the Portlock Cannery are just a few examples

[00:19:21] of the bizarre things that people have witnessed in the state of Alaska. In fact, there are so many documented encounters with strange creatures in the Alaskan wilderness that we will be revisiting this topic in future episodes.

[00:19:34] But before we end today's episode, I'd like to leave you with a story that came out of Thomas Bay, Alaska in 1900. Thomas Bay is located in southeast Alaska, and it lies northeast of Petersburg, Alaska, and the Baird Glacier drains into the bay.

[00:19:50] Thomas Bay is also known as the Bay of Death due to a massive landslide in 1750 that destroyed an entire village of over 500 people. It's also known as the Devil's Country because several people claimed to have seen devil creatures in the area in 1900.

[00:20:07] The story entitled, The Strangest Story Ever Told, is a first-hand account written by Harry D. Culp, and it involves three of his prospecting friends who he refers to as Charlie, John, and Fred. Charlie being the one who tells Harry about his encounter.

[00:20:24] As the story goes, Charlie received word from an Alaskan native of the Thomas Bay area to mine for gold there. Charlie went to check out the native man's story of the gold that was to be found in the mountains in May of 1900.

[00:20:38] When Charlie returned in June of 1900, he arrived without a coat or his hat, and his canoe was empty except for a large piece of quartz. It seems that Harry Culp wrote the story down but then hid it away.

[00:20:53] Years later, Harry's wife found the manuscript and shared it with their daughter Virginia. She had this to say, Dear readers, During the years, the Devil's Country story had been passed along by word of mouth so often that the details had become obscured.

[00:21:09] It was then a very pleasant surprise when Mother found the manuscript just a short time ago and gave it to me to read. I found it fascinating and I was left with a feeling of curiosity. I wonder if any of you readers will be curious. I wonder.

[00:21:25] Well, I'll just let you wonder. Sincerely, Virginia Culp, daughter of Harry D. Culp. I'd like to now read you a portion of Harry Culp's manuscript which includes his friend Charlie's encounter. The spring of 1900 found four men batching together in a shack at Wrangell, Alaska.

[00:21:45] All four were broke as is usual with prospectors. As luck would have it, I was one of the four. For reasons which will be quite obvious, I will just call the other three John, Charlie, and Fred.

[00:21:58] Charlie came into the shack one night in April, all excited and said, Fellows, I have been on the trail of an old native for the last month, trying to get him to tell me where he picked up a piece of free gold quartz he has at his camp.

[00:22:13] I never said anything about it before because I wanted to get the story from him first and today he spilled the beans. He told me to go up to Thomas Bay and camp on Patterson River on the right side, travel

[00:22:24] upriver for about eight miles, and then turn to the high mountains, and after traveling about a mile and a half I would find a lake shaped like a half moon. Plenty of stone like I found on a slide there, he said.

[00:22:37] Well of course, a prospector is ready to stampede on a whisper of gold anyplace, and we were no exception to the rule. We all talked the matter over, and finally it was decided that we would run our faces

[00:22:49] for an outfit and send Charlie to look the prospect over. While he was gone, John, Fred, and myself would hustle work somewhere for another grub steak and to pay the old one off. The forepart of May, Charlie loaded his outfit into a canoe and having favorable weather,

[00:23:07] left Wrangell for Thomas Bay, which lies northwesterly about fifty miles. He had three months' supplies but was to come back any time sooner if he found anything, but if he didn't show up in that time we were to put out a search for him.

[00:23:22] John and Fred took a contract to get out wood, and I got a job in the Wrangell sawmill. Things went along until the first part of June, when on a Sunday in the late afternoon,

[00:23:33] we all being home, and in walks Charlie without a coat or hat and looking as if he had been through hell. He didn't give us any greeting whatsoever, just heaved a piece of quartz over into the corner of the room and said, Get me something to eat.

[00:23:48] I'm all in and want to rest. The fellow looked it, and after he had eaten, he turned in without telling us a thing about his trip. We picked up the piece of quartz. Boy, it sure was a pretty thing to look at for a prospector.

[00:24:03] It was shot through with gold specks, just like a badly freckled-faced kid. Were we excited? I'll say we were. Just before dark we walked down to the beach to bring Charlie's outfit, as he had come

[00:24:14] up to the shack with only the piece of quartz in his hand, but there wasn't a thing in the canoe except the oars. Not much sleep for us that night, but Charlie never stopped sawing wood.

[00:24:25] We had hard work getting Charlie up for breakfast next morning, but when he did roll out, he just ate, borrowed a coat and hat, and left the house without saying a word, or even answering one question out of many put to him by all of us.

[00:24:40] Being excited and feeling ourselves worth a fortune, we did not go to work that day, but sat around the shack and passed the blamed piece of rock back and forth to each other while we talked and waited for Charlie to come back and make his report.

[00:24:54] Believe me, we were anxious to hear it. Along in the afternoon he came in and said, fellows, the S.S. Drigo will be in on her way south early tomorrow morning. Can you give me enough money for my ticket to Seattle?

[00:25:08] I'm through with Alaska and never want to see it again. I'll tell you about my trip to Thomas Bay and where I found the quartz, but my advice to you is to forget about it.

[00:25:18] It will never do you any good, and it will only cause you a lot of mental and physical pain. If we were not partners, I would never open my lips about this trip or what I found, but

[00:25:28] if you promise to never mention my name in connection with what I tell you or mention the name of Thomas Bay to me again, I'll give you the straight of my experience up there.

[00:25:38] Judge for yourselves as to my saneness, because this is the most astounding thing you ever heard and, as far as I'm concerned, is beyond me to reason it out. Don't ask any questions to prolong my story any longer than it takes to tell it, as I want

[00:25:52] to leave Alaska and forget it if I can. I will try to make the one telling plain enough. This is Charlie's Story. The first night after leaving Wrangell found me in Ideal Cove. The next night I reached Muddy River in time to make camp again.

[00:26:11] The third night I hit Ruth Island in Thomas Bay. I spent the day looking up Patterson River for a suitable place for a good camp, which I found a quarter of a mile up from Tidewater on the right-hand side, looking up the river.

[00:26:25] Broke camp on Ruth Island the next day and moved up to the place I picked out the day before, put up my tent, packed up my outfit, and left the canoe on the river bank.

[00:26:36] The next day I spent cooking beans, cutting wood, and making things comfortable for a long stay. As it looked like rain, I wanted to get things fixed up to keep dry. It started to rain that night and just kept it up for days.

[00:26:51] I lost track of time as each day was just like the one before. Had nothing to read, was all alone, couldn't do anything without getting soaked, and the roar of the river and wind through the timber just about drove me bugs, so I put in most

[00:27:05] of my time sleeping. Finally the weather broke and I got out. Spent several days in trying to find Half Moon Lake, but couldn't get it spotted. I did find, about two miles from camp up the river and about a mile from it, a lake shaped

[00:27:21] like the letter S. On the creek coming out from the lower end, I panned some pretty good colors, but as I figured, not enough to get excited about, yet an indication of gold in the country. Talk about a dead country, that sure is.

[00:27:37] There doesn't seem to be any life in there at all. You might spend all day in the timber without even seeing a squirrel. I was getting sort of tired of beans, rice, and bacon, so I made up my mind I would go

[00:27:49] over to a ridge about eight miles east of the S lake and get a few grouse as I thought I could hear a few hooters up there when I was at the head of this lake. I left come the next morning, which was a fine sunny day.

[00:28:03] I took only the rifle with me, and when I came to the ridge, sure enough, there were a few grouse hooting. I shot two and had gotten them when I bagged another one, which fell down the ridge about a hundred yards before it hung up.

[00:28:17] While on my way down to pick it up, I found that piece of quartz. Up to that time, I had paid very little attention to what the country I was in looked like, as it was so heavily timbered and brushy.

[00:28:30] The formation didn't show up, and I had no tools with me to uncover it. The top of an old snag had broken off and fallen, scraping the top moss and loose dirt for a space of about eight feet wide and eighteen or twenty feet long, uncovering this quartz

[00:28:45] ledge, which is where I found this piece. This ledge was worked smooth by glaciers at one time. I couldn't find anything to break the piece off with, so I used the butt of my gun to get that piece.

[00:28:58] In so doing, I broke the stock of my gun, thus ruining it for further use. This didn't worry me any, as I knew there was not game in the country larger than a grouse and damned few of them.

[00:29:11] My first thought was of the richness of the quartz and of you fellows and getting back to town to round you all up so we could get busy on it. After looking over and enjoying the feeling of knowing I had made a rich find, I covered

[00:29:24] the ledge up again with moss, limbs, and rotten chunk. Finishing that job, I thought I would climb the ridge directly over the ledge and get my landmarks so I could come back to it again or tell you where it was if anything should happen to me.

[00:29:40] This I did, climbing straight up over the ledge on the ridge till I reached the top, which was about six hundred feet above where I found the ledge. I looked down below me and picked out a big tree with a bushy top, taller than the rest

[00:29:54] about fifty feet to the right of the ledge. Looking over the top of this tree from where I stood, I could see out on Frederick Sound, Cape of the Straight Light, the point of Vanderput Spit, and turning a little to the left, I

[00:30:07] could see Sequoia Island from the mouth of Wrangel Narrows. Satisfied with that, I turned half round to get a back sight on some mountain peaks, and lying below me on the other side of the ridge from the ledge was the Half Moon Lake the native

[00:30:23] had told me about. Right there, fellows, I got the scare of my life. I hope to God I never see or go through the likes of it again. Swarming up the ridge toward me from the lake were the most hideous creatures.

[00:30:38] I couldn't call them anything but devils, as they were neither men nor monkeys yet looked like both. They were entirely sexless, their bodies covered with long coarse hair, except where the scabs and running sores had replaced it.

[00:30:53] Each one seemed to be reaching out for me and striving to be the first to get me. The air was full of their cries, and the stench from their sores and bodies made me faint.

[00:31:04] I forgot my broken gun and tried to use it on the first ones, and then I threw it at them and turned and ran. God how I ran. I could feel their hot breath on my back. Their long claw-like fingers scraped my back.

[00:31:19] The smell from their steaming, stinking bodies was making me sick, while the noises they made, yelling, screaming, and breathing drove me mad. Reason left me. How I reached the canoe or how I hung onto that piece of quartz is a mystery to me.

[00:31:34] When I came to it was night, and I was lying in the bottom of my canoe, drifting between Thomas Bay and Sukhoi Island. Cold, hungry, and crazy for a drink of water. But only to satisfy the latter urge, I started for Wrangell, and here I am.

[00:31:52] You no doubt think I'm either crazy or lying. All I can say is, there is the quartz. Never let me hear the name of Thomas Bay again, and for God's sake, help me get away tomorrow, on that boat.

[00:32:06] Throughout the years, Charlie's account that he shared with Harry Culp and his friends has been scrutinized and downplayed by many. But in the end, we'll never really know what he encountered in Thomas Bay.

[00:32:19] Whatever it was, it scared him enough to cause him to leave a potential fortune in the mountains in exchange for his own safety. As for the events that took place in Port Chatham and around Portlock Cannery, they remain unexplained to this day.

[00:32:34] For many though, the belief that something roams the wilds of the last frontier is just as strong today as it was over 90 years ago. As always, today's episode is not intended to make people shy away from visiting this

[00:32:50] beautiful state, but to inform you of the possible dangers that may exist within Alaska's wilderness. I don't think that we should ever be persuaded to stop exploring based on eyewitness accounts, but I do think it's important to learn from other people's experiences and take that

[00:33:06] knowledge with us when investigating the unknown. Do you believe that you or someone that you know has experienced something unexplainable? If you'd like to have your story shared on the podcast, you can contact me at paranormalmysteriespodcast at gmail.com.

[00:33:22] You may also visit paranormalmysteriespodcast.com and click on the Tell Your Story link. Please remember that no matter how insignificant or outlandish you believe your experience may seem, I'd like to hear about it. All of our contact information, as well as the sources that were referenced in today's

[00:33:39] episode, can be found in the show notes. You can also get involved with the podcast by joining our forum and by following us on social media. If you're wondering how you can support the podcast, you're doing it right now just by listening and we appreciate it.

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[00:34:06] New episodes of the paranormal mysteries podcast are produced every week and are available on all of your favorite podcast apps, including Spotify, Apple podcasts, and iHeart Radio. From all of us at the paranormal mysteries podcast, thank you so much for listening and

[00:34:21] remember, don't wait for the unknown to come to you. Get out there and find it.