Port Chatham - The Haunted Ghost Town in Alaska

Today's researchers call Port Chatham the town that bigfoot destroyed. But is that true? There is a great deal of history that surrounds this location and it doesn't necessarily mean bigfoot was behind the making of this 'ghost town'.

Let's look at some history of the location and try to put things more in perspective.

First off, the only official name of this location is Portlock. It was named for the British Naval officer Nathaniel Portlock who allegedly came ashore here in 1787. Portlock was established in the early 19th century as a cannery town, mostly dealing with salmon. The population consisted mostly of Russian and Aleuts. There was a chromite mining town nearby named Chrome.

Around 1900 an American firm brought in a fishing fleet and built the cannery. In 1921, Portlock was granted an official post office.

This photo is thought to be a promotional picture for a film.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A giant winged creature, like something out of Jurassic Park, has reportedly been sighted several times in Southwest Alaska in recent weeks.

 

Villagers in Togiak and Manokotak say they have seen a huge bird that's much bigger than anything they have seen before.

 

A pilot says he spotted the creature while flying passengers to Manokotak last week. He calculated that its wingspan matched the length of a wing on his Cessna 207. That's about 14 feet.

 

Other people have put the wingspan in a similar range.

 

Scientists aren't sure what to make of the reports. No one doubts that people in the region west of Dillingham have seen a very large rapto-like bird. But biologists and other people familiar with big Alaska birds say they're skeptical it's that big.

 

A recent sighting of the mystery bird occurred Oct. 10 when Moses Coupchiak, a 43-year-old heavy equipment operator from Togiak, 40 miles west of Manokotak, saw the bird flying toward him from about two miles away as he worked his tractor.

 

"At first I thought it was one of those old-time Otter planes," Coupchiak said. "Instead of continuing toward me, it banked to the left, and that's when I noticed it wasn't a plane."

 

The bird was "something huge," he said. "The wing looks a little wider than the Otter's, maybe as long as the Otter plane."

 

The bird flew behind a hill and disappeared. Coupchiak got on the radio and warned people in Togiak to tell their children to stay away.

 

Pilot John Bouker said he was highly skeptical of reports of "this great big eagle" that is two or three times the size of a bald eagle. "I didn't put any thought into it."

 

But early this week while flying into Manokotak, Bouker, owner of Bristol Bay Air Service, looked out his left window and 1,000 feet away, "there's this big ... . bird," he said.

 

"The people in the plane all saw him," Bouker said. "He's huge, he's huge, he's really, really big. You wouldn't want to have your children out."

 

Nicolai Alakayak, a freight and passenger driver from Manokotak who was flying with Bouker, said the creature looked like an eagle and was as large as "a little Super Cub."

 

Comparison to an eagle, certainly. Super Cub? Probably not, scientists said.

 

"I'm certainly not aware of anything with a 14-foot wingspan that's been alive for the last 100,000 years," said federal raptor specialist Phil Schemf in Juneau.

 

Schemf, other biologists, a village police officer and teachers at the Manokotak School said the sightings could be of a Steller's sea eagle, a species native to northeast Asia and one of the world's largest eagles. It's about 50 percent bigger than a bald eagle.

 

 (Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service http://www.shns.com)

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We all love our crypto-artists. In a world where we have mostly our imaginations to keep us fueled and inspired, our artists put a face and a shape to it. And I’m not sure they realize how important that role is to us. But even if they aren’t getting it exactly right, as we don’t really know for sure yet, they’re paying close attention to what witnesses are saying, and working hard to bring our imaginings to life.

One of our favorite bigfoot artists, RobRoy Menzies, of Juneau, Alaska talked a little about this when I spoke to him recently. And he explained how his life in Alaska has shaped and influenced his art. And he shares what may have been his very own bigfoot encounter before bigfoot was even a thought in his head. And he also talks about how his work as a forensic animator correlates with his sasquatch art. Here’s what he had to say.