The Headless Valley

A beautiful place but possibly...a haunted one too?

To finish off my spooky October posts, I am going to take you to the Northwest Territories to the Nahanni National Park Reserve.

This is a beautiful area of Canada, that the Dene People have called home for at least 9,000 years. For centuries, they followed the caribou into the area, hunting them in the valley and harvesting resources from the Mackenzie River.

But there is another name for the area.

The Headless Valley.

When the Klondike Gold Rush hit, prospectors took many different ways to get to the Yukon. One way was along the Nahanni River through the Northwest Territories. This river went right through a valley.

In the summer of 1897, about 766 prospectors travelled from Edmonton on the All-Canadian overland route, and of those only a handful went through the South Nahanni River route. Only two men are known to have completed the route.

In 1908, Willie and Frank McLeod went into the valley to find gold and were never heard from again. It would be two years later that their bodies were found, both without their heads. Today, the Lost McLeod Mine has become a legend unto itself and it is believed as many as 20 people have lost their lives searching for the mine. Also with the men was a Scottish engineer, who was never seen again.

Martin Jorgenson went into the valley in 1917, also looking for gold. He sent out letters stating he found gold but then his cabin burned to the ground. His body was found in the ashes, without its head.

Explorer Raymond Patterson set out from Fort Smith in the 1920s to explore the region and was told “men vanish in that country and down the river they say it’s a damned good country to keep clear of.”

In 1922, John O’Brien, a First World War veteran, was found hunched over a pile of timber with a matchbook in his hand, as if he had suddenly died while lighting a fire.

In 1945, another miner, this one coming from Ontario, came to the valley. When his body was found in a sleeping bag, his head was missing. There are also numerous RCMP reports that show many have vanished in the park, and there have even been a few unexplained plane crashes.

So, what is going on there?

Well, no one knows but it is a terrain for only the experienced traveler, and it is likely many have simply fallen prey to the elements and landscape itself.

Some say that an evil spirit haunts the valley and that its shrieks can be heard in the valley at night. Others state that hairy giants live in caves in the canyon walls, led by a pale skinned woman.

According to the Dene, the land was inhabited by the Naha once, who were ferocious warriors that frequently raided Dene settlements along the Mackenzie and Lair Rivers.

After several attacks, a party of Dene warriors went into the Nahanni country and planned to pillage a Naha camp. As they approached a series of Naha structures, they found that the Naha were nowhere to be found. They had simply vanished.

According to the Dene, the Naha were never seen again.