Portlock, Alaska

Portlock was established in the Kenai Peninsula in the early-twentieth century as a cannery, particularly for salmon. It is thought to have been named after Captain Nathaniel Portlock, a British ship captain who sailed there in 1786. In 1921, a United States Post Office opened in the town.

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Around the 1940s, it was reported that several sheep hunters had disappeared in the hills outside Portlock; it was also stated in a 1973 article from the Anchorage Daily News that dismembered bodies of some of the missing had washed ashore in the lagoon. The reason was never solved.

 

Many villagers blamed the unexplained deaths and disappearances on a Bigfoot-like creature referred to locally as Nantinaq, but the residents left the town behind en mass, not wanting to be added to the body count.

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Most of the people who fled Portlock in the 1940s moved to nearby villages. The village of Nanwalek still maintains private ownership of Portlock today, and in recent years, the community has considered the possibility of re-establishing Portlock as a village; their resources are shortening and their population is growing.

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This remote place in the middle of the ocean was first inhabited in 1787 as part of the British Royal Navy. After the first post office was established in the 1920s, it was said that the evil spirit or creature haunted the nearby mining camp of Chrome, which is abandoned today.

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During the 1940s, at the height of World War II, bodies in and around Portlock began turning up in nearby rivers, lagoons and trails near the town. These bodies were said to be completely mutilated and essentially torn to shreds. People also began disappearing out of nowhere and never returning home, for years on end.

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From another source:

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According to Brian Weed, cofounder of a group called Juneau's Hidden History, before Portlock began its life as a cannery it has been host to a small village many years before. It seems those inhabitants also abandoned their fishing camps, reporting that they were being bothered by some beast or spirit. Weed told KINY Radio that later when the cannery was abandoned those running it begged the inhabitants to stay, even employing armed guards to assuage their nerves. But no amount of begging or precautions seemed to motivate the townspeople to stay. When it's put into perspective just how many people died during this time this is no surprise: it's said that as many as three dozen people went missing from the small village in only twenty years' time.

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Here's some of the things said to have happened:

• In 1905, the workers of the cannery refused to go back to work, as they were afraid of the hairy man haunting the neighborhood. Only when the manager of the plant hired armed guards to watch not only the fish cannery, but also the village, did they agree to come back to work. note from paraventures research: we were unable to find documentation that there was a cannery in the location in 1905; this might be just rumor & we'll update if we find something.

• Andrew Kamluck was murdered in 1931. Someone, or something, hit him over the head with a piece of heavy log moving equipment. The piece of machinery was found more than 10 feet away from the body, and it was too heavy for one man to lift, let alone to swing it and strike a standing man.

• Around the same time a gold miner went to his claim  never to return. According to the Port Graham elder, Simeon Kvasnikoff, no traces were ever found of him, nor at his cabin, neither anywhere else. It was as if he had disappeared from the surface of the earth.

• Tom Larsen, a local sawmill owner, was out chopping wood for fish-traps, when he spotted a big hairy creature on two legs on the shore. He ran to his cabin to get his gun. When he came back, the creature was just standing there, looking at him, without running away or charging him. Larsen could never explain why he didn’t fire his rifle at it.

• During WW2 the workers of the Cannery plant often went into the forest to hunt, never to come back. Some bodies were later found mutilated and dismembered in a way that no animal would or could do. 

• In the 40s a group of hunters were tracking a moose. On the path, they found 18 inches long footprints  They concluded that something else was stalking the animal other than them. At a certain point they found an opening and signs of a fight. The only prints moving away from the site were the 18 inch footprints they had seen earlier. It was as if the unknown predator had killed the moose, an animal of at least 500 pounds, possibly 1000, and carried it away, on its shoulders. 

• In 1973, three hunters took shelter in Port Chatham during a three-day storm and claimed that each night something walked around their tent on what sounded like only two feet.

• Trees were being pulled up with the roots for no apparent reason. Sometimes they were put back upside down, with the roots pointing upward. 

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