The Book of Spooks

The scariest urban legend of state: Alaska

You've probably heard legends about planes and ships mysteriously disappearing in the Bermuda Triangle, the ocean area between Florida, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda. But those legends don't come close to the very real, very serious disappearances that have plagued Alaska for decades. There's a region of wilderness known by names like "Alaska's Bermuda Triangle," the "Bermuda Triangle of Alaska," and the "Alaskan Triangle" — and no matter what name you give it, it's far more deadly than its tropical cousin.

The border of the Alaskan Triangle stretches from Utkiagaviq (formerly known as Barrow) on the state's north coast to Anchorage and Juneau across the southern coast and includes vast areas of largely unexplored wilderness. Sprawling forests, icy mountain peaks, and desolate tundras are not the safest places in the world, but of the hundreds of search-and-rescue missions conducted every year, state troopers rarely find any trace of bodies — dead or alive.

The Alaskan Triangle first received widespread attention when U.S. House Majority Leader Hale Boggs' airplane vanished somewhere between Anchorage and Juneau in 1972. The disappearance triggered one of the country's largest ever search-and-rescue operations, involving 40 military aircraft, 50 civilian planes, and 39 days of searching an area of 32,000 square miles. Yet the search yielded not a shred of results: no wreckage, no debris, no human remains. Nothing.

In the book author Dennis Waller explores the history of mythical shape-shifting creatures found in stories of the Tlingit and Tsimshian Indians indigenous to southeastern Alaska. The "Kushtaka" is "land-otter man" and is the of the Alaskan Triangle. Legend has it that the creature appears to travellers in an irresistible form (such as a relative or vulnerable child) to lure victims to a nearby river, where it tears them to shreds or turns them into another Kushtaka.

A more grounded explanation is that the deceptively beautiful glaciers of Alaska have swallowed many of the missing people and planes. Although they may appear to be solid ice, the glaciers are honeycombed with hidden chambers, and those crevasses can be larger than houses, or even office buildings. Coupled with the falling snow of the northern climate, it's not unreasonable to think that in the Alaskan Triangle, "vanishing into thin air" really just means "buried by nature." Just remember to stay safe if you do venture into the Alaskan wilderness, and contact Alaska if you find (or need help finding) a wayward traveller.

(398 Words)