Ghost Town
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What are the ghost towns featured in this episode?
Hey, Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Today's podcast will feature two stories about ghost towns. The audio from both of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode. The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description. The first story you'll hear is called Portlock, and it's about a town in Alaska with a very dark history. The second and final story you'll hear is called Ghost Town, and it's about an abandoned town in an off limits forest. Okay, let's get into our first story called Portlock.
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Scattered across the North American continent are many ghost towns, places that used to be vibrant and alive that are now dead and abandoned. In these places, you can find old churches and buildings and schools that are usually in a pretty significant state of decay. The reasons a town might die varies. Sometimes it's because a new railroad or highway is put in that bypasses the town, or the town has just exhausted all of their natural resources, which were the original draw to the town. Mining towns are a good example of that. Other reasons are wars, natural disasters, political wranglings. There's a whole bunch of reasons why towns just suddenly stop existing. But there's one ghost town in North America that has a really unique and very dark reason for why it ultimately was abandoned. And that town is Portlock, Alaska. Portlock, which is also called Port Chatham, is located on the farthest southwestern tip of the Kenai Peninsula. It's easily one of the most beautiful areas in all of Alaska, but it also happens to be very remote.
What is the dark history of Portlock, Alaska?
And Portlock specifically, even by Kenai standards, is considered extremely remote. You can only get there by boat or by bush plane. The town was technically founded in 1787 when Captain Nathaniel Portlock of the Royal Navy landed there, but it wasn't really turned into a real settlement until the early 1900s when commercial fishermen built a cannery there. By 1921, the town's fishing economy was doing so well that the US government believed they would be the next major commercial fishing hub, and so they actually established a post office there. Everything seemed to be going great for Portlock until the 1930s when rumors began seeping out along the Kenai Peninsula that there was something wrong with Portlock.
Men from this cannery town were going missing at an alarming rate, and the few that were found again were always found dead and mutilated in a nearby lagoon. Initially, the townspeople believed these were bear attacks, but the natives of the Kenai Peninsula that found out about what was happening in Portlock, they stopped by and they said, those are not bear attacks. Those are almost certainly attacks by a creature we call the Nantina, which means half man, half beast. And they are tall, two-legged, hairy creatures that live in the forest right near you. Now, of course, this just sounds like folklore, but when you consider the fact that from 1930 to 1950, dozens of Portlock residents disappeared in that forest or were violently killed and then dumped in the lagoon right outside of the forest, it makes you wonder what's in the forest.
But since none of the people who went missing were ever found alive again, there was never any good description of what it was that was causing them to disappear in the first place. Well, with the exception of one case, In 1943, John Meyer, who was a resident of Portlock, was at his campsite and he was crouched down when he felt something leap onto his back and start pummeling his head and hitting him on the side. And he kind of went into the fetal position. And then at some point his dog started barking and caused whatever was on his back to get scared and run off.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What are the ghost towns featured in this episode?
0:00–2:48
2
What is the dark history of Portlock, Alaska?
2:48–7:13
3
What mysterious events led to the abandonment of Portlock?
7:13–10:52
4
What happened to the residents of Portlock?
10:52–23:30
5
What is the next story about ghost towns?
23:30
6
What was the story of Dr. William C. Clark in Litchfield County?
23:30–26:31
7
What is the significance of the covered wooden bridge in Litchfield?
26:31–30:02