Port Chatham, Alaska
Alaska is full of stunning vistas, beautiful animals, and ghost towns. Like the wild west but a little colder, Alaska is home to more than a few abandoned towns. Some of them, like the towns of the wild west, have clear reasons for withering away. However, other ghost towns prod and poke at the stranger parts of one’s imagination.
Located on the Kenai Peninsula, the ghost town of Port Chatham is home to just about everything besides humans. In addition to a ghost town, there are sightings of bigfoot-like humanoids, unexplained deaths, and ghosts. It was first inhabited in 1787 by the British Royal Navy, but wouldn’t become more permanent until the early twentieth century.
Port Chatham, also known as Portlock, was originally a cannery town. It was established in the early twentieth century and in 1921 it even got its very own Post Office! However, this small town would soon become abandoned when, in the early 1950s, members of the community fled en masse. The Post Office closed in 1951 and with it any hope of the community returning.
But why did an entire community leave?
There are several reasons, but one of the most infamous is the stories that feature a sasquatch-like creature. It was said to walk on two feet, be incredibly strong, and had the ability to rip out trees from the ground.
Additionally, beginning in the 1940s, during the height of World War II, bodies began washing up on the shores of Port Chatham. More disturbing than the simple fact of bodies washing up on shore was that the bodies washing up were mutilated and appeared to be torn to shreds. In addition to these bodies, several members of the community disappeared and were never heard from again.
Brian Weed, co-founder of a group called Juneau’s Hidden History, has spent a significant amount time digging up these old stories. One of them, as a logger, goes like this (in Brian’s own words): “A logger was out working and something or someone hit him over the head with a huge piece of logging equipment, something that one man couldn't have lifted. When they found his body, there was blood on the equipment and there was no way that one person could have done it. He was a good ten feet from the logging equipment, so it's not like he slipped, fell, and hit his head. It looked more like someone picked it up and bonked him over the head."
It is also rumored that local Native people were aware of the sasquatch-like presence that haunted the shores of Port Chatham and it had a name: Nantiinaq.
There is also a strange, mournful creature that haunts the town. It is said she mostly stays in the clicks and has an unnaturally white face and would often disappear shortly before approaching her.
Loren Coleman dug up another story that was reported In an April 15, 1973 issue of the Anchorage Daily News. The writer had learned the story during an evening spent with the school teacher and his wife at English Bay (Nanwalek) while on a boat trip.
The story covered the reason why the town left, “sometime in the beginning years of World War II, rumors began to seep along the Kenai Peninsula that things were not right in Portlock. Men from the cannery town would reportedly go up into the hills to hunt Dall sheep and bear, and never return. Worse yet, sometimes stories would circulate about mutilated bodies that were swept down into the lagoon, torn and dismembered in a way that bears could not, or would not, do.”
Brian Weed, spoke to KINYRadio and acknowledges that, while there may be logical explanations, such as a bear, something strange was afoot in the town. "Those people did leave the town. We know when the town and post office shut down. We know that there are reported murders in the area. They called them murders, but they also included people that just went lost in those reports. We're not talking about a dozen people. We're talking like three dozen people. If we have a serial killer in the area at the time, they took out a lot of people in the course of say 20 years."
The continuation of disappearances, the bodies, and the looming lore of an evil sasquatch-like creature hunting the local community drove people away. As more people left, fear continued to grow and eventually everyone decided to leave.
Nanwalek elder, Malania Helen Kehi, was born in the Port Chatham in 1934, spoke to the Homer Tribune and shared some of her thoughts on why her birthplace was abandoned. She said her parents, the village, and the other people that lived there were tired of being terrorized by the Nantiinaq, which she said translates to ‘half-man, half-beast.’ She said that for years, many refused to venture into the forests and found it easier and more relaxing to simply move up the coast to Port Graham. According to Alaska Magazine, “Earlier records made by Portlock cannery management showed that the site had been vacated once before. The cannery supervisor noted in 1905 that all the Native workers evacuated the area because of “something” in the forest, but they returned to work at the cannery the following year.”
Whether it was lore, a serial killer, or sasquatch that drove people away, one thing is certain, this remote ghost town is not a place that I’m eager to visit.
The header image is of Lakes and mountains on the Kenai Peninsula and is licensed under Public Domain.
