Legends 69: The Last Frontier

Out beyond the edge of the known, where simply existing comes with risk, you will always find stories of threats that defy rational explanation. Narrated and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with writing by Alex Robinson and research by Cassandra de Alba. ————————— Lore Resources: Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music http://www.lorepodcast.com/music Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources http://www.lorepodcast.com/sources All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com http://www.grimandmild.com ————————— Sponsors: Quince: Premium European clothing and accessories for 50% to 80% less than similar brands. Visit Quince.com/LORE http://www.quince.com/lore for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. SimpliSafe: Secure your home with 24/7 professional monitoring. Sign up today at SimpliSafe.com/Lore http://simplisafe.com/lore to get 50% off a new SimpliSafe system. ————————— To report a concern regarding a radio-style, non-Aaron ad in this episode, reach out to ads @ lorepodcast.com with the name of the company or organization so we can look into it. ————————— To advertise on this podcast please email: [email protected]. Or go to: https://advertising.libsyn.com/lore ————————— ©2025 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:32Aaron Mahnke?

  No dame ever ran the Boston Marathon. Those were the exact words that Katherine Switzer's coach said to her before she proved him and the rest of the world completely wrong. Today, the Boston Marathon is largely reserved for the most elite runners in the world. Back in the 1960s, it was even more exclusive. But that exclusivity wasn't based on qualifying times. It was based on gender. Since the advent of the race, women hadn't been allowed to participate in the marathon. But Katherine wanted to do it, and so she did. At first, no one suspected a thing. She signed up for the race using initials instead of her first name, enlisted a man to pick up her numbered bib at the table,

• 2:15Aaron Mahnke?

  and ran the first few miles with the hood of her sweatshirt pulled up to hide her hair. But eventually, her hood slipped off and her true identity was exposed. She was spotted by Jack Semple, the marathon's co-director. Semple made a mad dash for Catherine and grabbed her by the shoulder, screaming, "Get the hell out of my race and give me those numbers." She managed to escape him, though, and was able to finish the 1967 Boston Marathon without being assaulted again. Her success story, though, didn't change the minds of any of the men who were in charge. Even months after the incident, Semple was still complaining in interviews about her,

• 2:55Aaron Mahnke?

  and the director of the Boston Athletic Association even told reporters, and this is a quote, "If that girl were my daughter, I would spank her." Today, it's clear that Catherine was a pioneer for women everywhere, but during her experience in 1967, she came face-to-face with a hard truth, one that can be found all throughout the dark stories and legends that people have whispered over the centuries. When you're on the frontier of unexplored territory, you have to be prepared to face some monsters. I'm Aaron Mahnke, and this is Lore Legends.

• 3:45Aaron Mahnke?

  I don't think I'm overstating it when I tell you that Alaska is massive. Most folks probably already know that it's the largest state in the US, but I doubt that many people realize just how large it is. You see, Alaska's landmass is about one-fifth of the size of mainland United States. The next-largest state, Texas, could fit into Alaska two and a half times with room to spare. To put it into perspective, it would take you roughly three full days to drive from one end of the Alaska Highway to the other. And that route wouldn't even take you all the way across the state. Now, I could sit here all day and throw statistics at you, but nothing I will say will actually replace experiencing it for yourself.

• 4:27Aaron Mahnke?

  It's hard to describe, but those who have been there say that you can quite literally feel the vastness of the land. There's just something about Alaska that makes you feel small. The mountains tower impossibly high overhead. The sky is so wide and unbroken that it almost feels like you could float away at any given moment. The never-ending roads stretch on and on, and there are plenty of areas where you can drive for hours without seeing another living soul. Everything is bigger in Alaska, except, of course, for the little people. Now, to be fair, dozens of cultures across the world have their own version of the little people legend. Pixies, brownies, gnomes, dwarves, pukka, pakwaji, and ibugogo.

• 5:11Aaron Mahnke?

  Honestly, they're everywhere, including the last frontier state, and there, they're called the ictinrot. According to the Yupik peoples of southwestern Alaska, these little folk are only about two or three feet tall, and they dwell underground. It's believed by some that they can actually shapeshift into wolves or foxes, and in fact, wolves are so closely tied to the little folk that many attribute Alaska's fluctuating wolf population to the movements of these ictinrot. And some people also believe that they can transform into killer whales. A few groups have actually banned hunting them for this exact reason. But when they are in their humanoid form, they've been described as looking similar to European dwarves.

• 5:52Aaron Mahnke?

  But unlike those dwarves, the ictinrot are always accompanied by a thick, soupy fog. According to legend, seeing fog is actually one of the first signs that they're nearby, or that you might have stumbled onto their turf. And trust me, this isn't something that you want to do. You see, time works differently for the ictinrot. Down in their subterranean world, a single day is equivalent to a year above ground, similar to fairy stories in the British Isles. And if you so much as look into the windows of their houses, those few moments could cost you multiple days up on the Parents would often warn their children not to accept invitations to visit strangers homes lest the stranger in question be an Iktinrot who could steal them away for years

• 6:37Aaron Mahnke?

  at a time. But not every interaction with the Little People has to lead to a Rip Van Winkle situation. Sometimes the kids will come back in a fairly timely manner. It's just that when they do, they're different. According to one folk tale, a little boy disappeared one day, only to be found miles away from his parents' home. Everyone in his village assumed that he had found a doorway that led him through the Iktinrot's underground labyrinth. Somehow, the tunnels under the hills had shortened his journey, allowing him to travel much farther than he would have if he'd been on the surface. His family, of course, celebrated that he had returned home safely, and then everybody moved on.

• 7:16Aaron Mahnke?

  But as the years passed by, they began to notice something strange: the boy never aged. He stayed small for the rest of his life, just like the Iktinrot. It's hard to decide which is worse, honestly: being trapped underground for years or never aging beyond prepubescence. Thankfully, sometimes you can get away without having to deal with either one, because on very, very rare occasions, the Iktinrot might leave you entirely alone. Once, a man was said to have accidentally stumbled into their underground world. The Little People there noticed that he was wearing a very odd patchwork parka. Every patch looked like it had come from the skin of a different animal.

• 7:59Aaron Mahnke?

  And when the Iktinrot asked him about it, he proudly told them that every animal on the coats had been killed by a different member of his family. Now, this made them pull up short. They realized that if this man went missing, then a horde of siblings, cousins, and uncles would all come after them. So with a polite smile, the Iktinrot escorted him back to the human world, and then they firmly shut the door behind him. It seems that if you want to avoid the wrath of the Little People, just make sure that you have an even bigger family to protect you.

• 8:40Aaron Mahnke?

  They had missed the Alaska Gold Rush, and that was bound to make them desperate. In the year 1900, a man named Harry Culp was living with three other prospectors in a little shack in a small Alaskan outpost called Wrangle. Clearly, they were down on their luck. A prospector without gold isn't of use to anybody, and despite their many attempts, none of these men had ever struck it rich. One day, though, one of the roommates, a guy named Charlie, came home with an interesting tidbit of information. A local Klingon man had given him a tip on where he could find more gold than he could ever carry. Apparently, a landslide had buried a Klingon village out near Thomas Bay. Most of its inhabitants had died, leaving behind a literal gold mine.

• 9:24Aaron Mahnke?

  But this wasn't a golden ticket to a better life. The man warned Charlie that the area was haunted by evil spirits. Even if he did manage to find the gold, those spirits would follow him home. Charlie, of course, ignored this dire warning. Who cared about ghosts and monsters when so much money was on the line? He was ready to go investigate the scene right then and there, but the others were feeling a bit more cautious about it. Nobody knew if this village would legitimately have gold buried beneath the rubble. And what's more, they all had jobs that they needed to show up for so that they could pay off their debt from their latest failed mining expedition. But Charlie disagreed. He was willing to take the risk, and if you were forced to share a tiny shack with three

• 10:07Aaron Mahnke?

  other grown men, you might be willing to do the same. So while Harry and the two other roommates stayed in town, Charlie set off for the destroyed village. He was gone for an entire month, and when he finally came back, he was far from okay. According to Harry, he looked as though he'd been through hell. All he had to show for his trip was a hunk of quartz veined with gold, but he didn't even seem to care about that. Instead, the first thing he did was ask his roommates to lend him some money so that he could buy a ticket back to Seattle. The men were understandably confused by this sudden request, but all Charlie said was that he was never coming back to Alaska, so they helped him get on the first steamer out of there.

• 10:49Aaron Mahnke?

  And finally, right before he boarded, he told them what had happened. At first, he said, everything had gone just fine. He had taken his canoe to Thomas Bay, and then he had hiked up to the Patterson River. After a few miserable nights of camping on a half-moon lake near the destroyed village, he finally found the mother lode. There was an entire ledge full of quartz, all shot through with gold. You see, Charlie hadn't actually brought any proper mining tools with him, so he did the next best thing. He used the butt of his rifle to smash off a piece of quartz, breaking the gun in the process. Now miraculously, he managed to secure a chunk of gold without shooting his face off, but that's where his luck ended.

• 11:30Aaron Mahnke?

  As he stood on that ledge, feeling as though he were on top of the world, he saw something that gave him pause. Squinting, he looked down at the half-moon lake, and what he saw there made his blood run cold. I don't think that I could describe it any better than he did himself. In Charlie's own words, "Swarming up the ridge toward me from the lake were the most hideous creatures. 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. 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

• 12:15Aaron Mahnke?

  faint." Panicking, Charlie tried to shoot his broken gun at them. When it didn't fire, he just threw it at the teeming mass of monsters, turned tail and ran, feeling their claws grasping at his back. And then, somehow, he woke up in his canoe, drifting through Thomas Bay. Charlie never figured out how he survived the incident. All he knew was that he should have been dead, but he wasn't. Unbeknownst to Charlie, he had just survived an attack from a group of kushtaka. The kushtaka are legendary creatures from Klingit folklore. The name translates to "land otter man", and that's exactly what they are: half-man, half-otter. It's said that some people become kushtaka after they die.

• 12:59Aaron Mahnke?

  In fact, that's what some people think happened to the Klingit people who died under the landslide in Thomas Bay. They reflected their violent death by transforming into a violent creature. Sometimes the kushtaka can be helpful, though. One Klingit folk tale tells the story of a husband and wife who survived a famine after their deceased son, who had drowned the year before, suddenly showed up and began fishing for them every day. Usually, though, they're said to be bloodthirsty creatures. They have an entire bag of tricks up their furry sleeves to lure their victims in, from shape-shifting into a loved one to mimicking the sounds of a crying baby. Clearly, Charlie found a group that was more direct in their approach. Over the years, word of his story spread,

• 13:43Aaron Mahnke?

  enticing other prospectors to find the quartz ledge, but nobody was ever successful. Some suffered from temporary insanity, and others disappeared altogether, but none of them brought so much as a sliver of gold home with them, if they came home at all. In that regard, Charlie, it seems, was the wealthiest man of them all.

• 14:15Aaron Mahnke?

  The small town of Portlock has been abandoned since 1950. Technically, everyone actually left town in 1949. But one man, the lone Portlock postmaster, held out for one more year before he too threw in the towel. Now, to be fair, ghost towns aren't all that unusual in Alaska. Generally speaking, it just isn't an easy place to live, and it becomes even harder if you set up camp in a remote region. Some towns were abandoned after a natural disaster or a particularly hard winter. Sometimes, people left to find better employment opportunities elsewhere. And, in one instance, an isolated settlement on Ayac Island emptied out after the 1918 flu epidemic. But the town of Portlock was a different beast entirely.

• 14:59Aaron Mahnke?

  You see, its residents were well-established. The town was settled by European fur traders all the way back in 1786, and there had been steady work there ever since. In fact, around the turn of the century, the town got a mini-population boom when a couple of fish canneries opened up, and, again, a few years later, when chromium was discovered nearby. Now, when I say that there was a mini-population boom, I do mean "mini." There were only, ever, about 50 people living there at any given time. But those people were just as dedicated to their jobs and their homes as much as any of us are today. But finally, in 1949, both the local canary and the chromium mine closed. And so, the people of Portlock were forced to move on to greener pastures. At least, that's the official story.

• 15:44Aaron Mahnke?

  But local legends disagree. Now, if you ask certain people, they'll tell you that the mass exodus from Portlock had less to do with the lack of jobs and more to do with the fact that its residents were being terrorized by a nantinok. This Bigfoot-like creature is said to be tall, hairy, and ridiculously stinky. In fact, some people say that you can smell it coming long before you actually see it. Unfortunately, the BO early warning system isn't that much help. This thing is such a fast runner that your escape window is next to nonexistent. While it's rare to actually see a nantinok out in the wild, it's fairly easy to see the path of destruction they leave behind in their wake. Odds are that if you follow their massive 18-inch-long footprints,

• 16:27Aaron Mahnke?

  then you'll eventually find broken branches, felled trees, and the occasional brutally murdered moose. And just so you know, an adult moose weighs about half as much as an average car. So if the moose aren't safe, then the people definitely are not. The Nantinok was believed to be responsible for multiple incidents in Portlock over the years. Even all the way back in 1905, the beast was blamed when the local cannery unexpectedly closed for a season. According to the stories, something in the woods had disturbed the workers so badly that they refused to come back until their employer hired someone to guard them during their shifts. A few years later, in 1931, a logger named Andrew Kamluck was killed on the job.

• 17:08Aaron Mahnke?

  Nobody had been around to see what had happened, but it didn't take long to piece it together. His head had been struck by a logging crane, which, while horrific, was not an unexpected way to go for a man who spent most of his waking hours working with logging cranes. Still, there were some who claimed that his death wasn't normal at all. When his body was found, it was a full 10 feet away from the blood-splattered crane. The more superstitious members of the community there believed that a Nantinok had hoisted the crane up, beat Andrew over the head with it, and then thrown it across the clearing. Surprisingly, these isolated events were not enough to convince people that the community was being targeted by a giant ape-man. But eventually, things picked up steam.

• 17:49Aaron Mahnke?

  Locals claimed that in the 1940s, multiple Portlock men disappeared while they were out there hunting. Some of them were never found, but in other cases, a few corpses were washed downriver, bloodied and mutilated beyond recognition. And there are claims that up to three dozen men were lost over the course of just a handful of years. And so, the people of Portlock did the only thing they felt they could do. They packed up and left, leaving the empty town to the mercy of the Nantinok. It certainly is a chilling story, but that's probably all that it is. Because here's the thing: we don't actually have any official records to confirm any of these alleged deaths. In fact, Portlock's only recorded non-natural death that historians have been able to dig

• 18:33Aaron Mahnke?

  up was from 1920, when a man fell off some scaffolding. There are no contemporary documents about Andrew the Lager or about these missing hunters. And I'm not saying that it couldn't have happened at all. After all, such a small rural community may not have kept written records of every single death or disappearance, but the fact that there's absolutely nothing out there about dozens of maimed corpses floating downstream to the town is suspicious to say the least. Odds are, the entire ordeal was completely made up. Which leaves us with one simple question: why?

• 19:18Aaron Mahnke?

  When Sukbek elder Melania Kell was asked to do an interview for a magazine in 2009 about why Portlock was abandoned, it was all she could do not to roll her eyes. Actually, scratch that. Based on what we know about her, she probably did roll her eyes. Quite a bit, in fact. Kell had been born in Portlock in 1934, and she moved away with the rest of her family when she was a young girl. In 2009, she was one of the last living members of that community. So of course, everyone was always asking her why the town had been abandoned. The thing is, though, Kell was tired of this question. She thought that the reason was obvious: as new highways were built and industry started booming in other towns elsewhere, Portlock's economy dwindled until it made sense for everyone

• 20:03Aaron Mahnke?

  to leave. But that sensible answer didn't fit in with people's romanticized views of ghost towns. They wanted something more exciting, while Kell just wanted to be left alone. And so, when journalists came knocking, she agreed to yet another interview, and then she lied. According to her cousin Sally, who stood in as a translator during the interview, Kel made the entire thing up: the terror of the Nantinok, the missing hunters, all of it. Years later, when she was asked about her cousin's claims, Sally said, "It wasn't true. Everybody knows that, but it was not our place to say nothing. We were brought up in a way where you can't tell our elders they are wrong."

• 20:44Aaron Mahnke?

  And that being said, Sally does actually believe that the Nantinok existed. She said that he had lived in the area around Portlock for a long time. Her parents and her grandfathers would talk about it fairly often. And once, her brother even had a run-in with a terrible-smelling creature that looked an awful lot like a Bigfoot. But of course, nothing happened, because according to Sally, the Nantinok never actually killed anyone. He was just out there, living his best life, avoiding people as much as he possibly could. In the end, if the story is true, it seems that Kel did not necessarily lie about the Nantinok. She just lied about everything else.

• 21:39Aaron Mahnke?

  I love a good cryptid story, and over the years I've learned that I am not alone. So, I hope today's tour through some of the weirder inhabitants of Alaska gave you some chills. After all, there's nothing more compelling than a cryptid who may or may not exist. But don't leave just yet. We have one more monstrous tale to share with you, and if it's true, it means that some creatures are easier to hunt than others. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. This episode of Lore was made possible by Quince. Cold mornings, holiday plans, this is when I need my wardrobe to just work, and that's why I'm all about Quince. They make it easy to look sharp, feel good, and find gifts that last. From Mongolian cashmere sweaters to Italian wool coats, Quince pieces are crafted from

• 22:24Aaron Mahnke?

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• 23:06Aaron Mahnke?

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• 23:50Aaron Mahnke?

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• 24:32Aaron Mahnke?

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• 25:44Aaron Mahnke?

  They had never seen anything like it before. When bush pilot Babe Alesworth and fisherman Bill Hammersley went for a flight back in 1942, they didn't expect for anything unusual to happen. They were both local to southwestern Alaska, so joyrides like this weren't uncommon for them. In fact, the pilot Alesworth worked as a guide, flying people out to remote areas during fishing season. It would be fair to say that he knew this region like the back of his hand. Even so, these two men were about to see something brand spanking new. When they passed over Lake Iliamna, they noticed a disturbance in the water. Looking down, they saw a school of several dozen fish right in the center of the lake. But these weren't just any fish, they were huge.

• 26:27Aaron Mahnke?

  They looked, and I quote, "like mini submarines." Now, Lake Iliamna does host a population of freshwater seals, but these things that they saw were not seals. Both Babe and Bill were adamant that they were fish, all somewhere between 20 to 30 feet long, with gray skin and wide fins. The men watched these strange creatures swim for a few more minutes, and then the fish all dove deeper into the lake, and the men never saw them ever again. It wasn't for a lack of trying, though. Alesworth flew back over Lake Iliamna over a hundred more times in an attempt to find the fish. And as for Bill Hammersley, well, he tried his hand at fishing for them. After years of no success, though, he went for the "nuclear" option.

• 27:09Aaron Mahnke?

  In the 1950s, Bill and three other men baited a hook with a massive chunk of moose meat, and then they lowered the lure into the lake on a steel aircraft cable. The good news is that something definitely latched onto the hook. But the bad news is that whatever it was snapped the steel cable clean through. Babe and Bill weren't the only people to ever see Lake Iliamna's mysterious monsters. In 1945, for example, a US government survey pilot spotted a 25-foot fish from his aircraft. And then in 1963, a state wildlife biologist saw the exact same thing while he flew over the lake. And in 1977, three people in an air taxi spotted it again.

• 27:51Aaron Mahnke?

  The pilot of that plane later recalled seeing the fish arch its gigantic back before diving into the depths of the lake. Now, while most sightings have happened from the sky, there have been a few on the ground as well. In the 1980s, for example, several people reported seeing giant fish both from their boats and from the shore. One witness claimed that one of the fish had a large white stripe on its fin. The mystery was so compelling that in 1980, an Anchorage magazine offered a $100,000 reward to anyone who could prove that monster fish actually lived in the lake. The money remained unclaimed. To this day, nobody knows what creatures dwell beneath the waves of Lake Iliamna. Some theories, while practical, are rather boring.

• 28:34Aaron Mahnke?

  People have suggested that everyone was just seeing large sturgeons, sleeper sharks, or just very big cod. But as none of these creatures has ever been caught in the lake before, I think we can indulge in a few more of the more outlandish guesses. Some have suggested that there's a large pod of beluga whales that somehow got trapped in the lake, or maybe that they're a group of giant ancient freshwater newts. My personal favorite theory, though, is that the monster of Lake Iliamna is more than ancient, it's actually prehistoric, i.e. that it's a family of pleosaurs. Yes, aquatic dinosaurs, who have somehow escaped extinction.

• 29:12Aaron Mahnke?

  Considering that Lake Iliamna reaches depths of up to a thousand feet, I doubt that we will ever learn what exactly lives in that water. But then again, what's life without a little mystery?

• 29:39Aaron Mahnke?

  This episode of Lore Legends was produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with writing by Alex Robinson and research by Cassandra De Alba. Don't like hearing the ads? Well, I've got a solution for you. There is a paid version of Lore available on Apple Podcasts and Patreon that is 100% ad-free. Subscribers there also get weekly mini-bonus episodes we call Lore Bites, and Patreon backers specifically get merch discounts and access to my inbox. Honestly, it's a bargain for all of that ad-free storytelling and a great way to support the show and the team behind it. For more information about those ad-free options, head over to lorepodcast.com/support. And of course, Lore is much more than just a podcast. There's the book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of a TV adaptation on Amazon Prime.

• 30:24Aaron Mahnke?

  Learn more over at lorepodcast.com. And lastly, you can follow the show on Threads, Instagram, Blue Sky, and YouTube. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.

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