Portlock Alaska: The Town Abandoned Due to Bigfoot Terror

Posted Friday, June 26, 2026

By Squatchable.com staff

# The Alaskan Ghost Town That Bigfoot Drove Into Oblivion So I just stumbled across this absolutely fascinating video that dives deep into one of the most chilling Bigfoot stories I've come across in a while, and I had to share it with anyone who appreciates these kinds of historical encounters. The video explores the complete collapse of a once-thriving Alaskan settlement called Portlock, located on the remote southern tip of the Kenai Peninsula, and the role that ongoing Sasquatch activity played in its demise. What makes this story so compelling is that it's not just folklore or campfire tales. There's a documented timeline that traces the rise and fall of this community, and the pattern of escalating encounters is genuinely unsettling. Portlock wasn't some fly-by-night camp either. It was a legitimate settlement that started attracting people back in the late 1700s when Captain Nathaniel Portlock first explored the area and described it as a paradise teeming with fish. By the early 1900s, it had become a proper town with a cannery, homes, families, and miners searching for gold and silver in the surrounding hills. People had real lives there. Then things started getting weird around 1905. Workers at the cannery began abandoning their posts and fleeing the camp. In an era where steady employment meant survival, people don't just walk away from their livelihoods unless something is seriously wrong. The reports from that time describe something mysterious harassing the camp, though the details were vague. Workers returned the following season, but the unease had already taken root. The video goes into some of the more specific encounters that locals passed down over the decades. One resident described seeing a massive, hairy figure tearing apart fishing wheels on the beach. For anyone unfamiliar with these structures, they're incredibly heavy and built to withstand rough ocean conditions. The sheer strength required to destroy them is staggering. The resident ran home to grab a weapon and returned for a face-to-face standoff with the creature. They locked eyes in complete silence before the Sasquatch simply turned and walked away. That kind of calm, deliberate behavior is something researchers have noted in other encounters too. These aren't mindlessly aggressive creatures. They seem to assess situations and make conscious choices about engagement. Things escalated from there. People started disappearing, hunters and workers who ventured out and simply never returned. Even more disturbing were the bodies recovered from the nearby lagoon. The injuries described didn't match bear attacks according to local wildlife experts, which left the community with no rational explanation for what was happening to them. By 1950, the psychological toll had become too much. The entire population packed up and left. The postmaster actually stayed behind alone for a full year before finally closing the office and joining the exodus. Imagine being the last person in a town where people have been vanishing and turning up with inexplicable wounds. The isolation alone would be enough to break anyone's spirit. But here's the part that really got me. The encounters didn't stop once the town emptied. In the 1970s, a group of fishermen caught in a severe storm sought shelter in the Portlock ruins while waiting out the weather, and they reported something deeply disturbing happening during their stay. The video cuts off before finishing that particular account, so definitely worth watching to hear how that story ends. Alaska has always been one of those hotspots that doesn't get as much attention as the Pacific Northwest, but the Kenai Peninsula specifically has a long history of Sasquatch reports. The dense, remote wilderness, the extreme isolation of many settlements, and the long dark winters create conditions where these encounters can happen without much outside documentation. Portlock stands as one of the most dramatic examples of what sustained Sasquatch activity can do to a human community. An entire town, gone. Not because of economic collapse or natural disaster, but because something in those woods made life there unbearable. This video is absolutely worth the watch if you haven't seen it. The way it lays out the chronology and contrasts the thriving pre-1950 Portlock with the ghost town it became really drives home how dramatic the transformation was. There's also some interesting context about the Aleutian peoples who knew the region long before European explorers arrived, which adds another layer to the history. Check it out and let me know what you think, because this one stuck with me long after it ended.