This Paranormal Life - #167 The Valley of Headless Men: Cryptid Or Curse?

Episode Date: June 9, 2020

Deep in the Northern Territories of Canada lies a mysterious and untouched part of Earth: Nahanni Valley. Despite it's scenic beauty, the valley harbours a horrible secret - many of those who enter the valley never return. And those who are found, are missing a head...Support us on Patreon.com/ThisParanormalLife to get access to weekly bonus episodes!Buy Official TPL Merch! - thisparanormallife.com/storeFollow us on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTubeJoin our Secret Society Facebook CommunityAdvertise on This Paranormal Life via Gumball.fmIntro music by www.purple-planet.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What will happen when the sun runs out of juice? Did Tamagotchi haunt us after they died? Answers to these questions and more on this episode of THIS PARANORMAL LIFE! Whoa! Hey! Welcome back to This Paranormal Life. This is the weekly comedy podcast.

Every Tuesday we get to the bottom of a different paranormal tale, claim, or case and decide whether it's truly paranormal or not. As always, you're joined by myself, Mr. Kit Greer-Molvena, this guy, Mr. Rory Pars. How are you doing today, Rory? I thought you'd never get to me. I'm doing fantastic. I'm excited.

I'm ready to investigate the paranormal. I've got my night-vis gogs. I've got my high-vis vest. I've got my... So do you want to be seen or not? You're skulking around in the dark, but in high-vis? When I want to be seen or not you're you're skulking around in the dark when i want to be seen i'll be seen trust me that might explain the flare strapped to your side because it seems like you're gonna go out in a bang and on every episode of this paranormal life

we like to dive straight into the investigation so right off thank you so much to joshua pearson for sending in this investigation. Today's case takes us into the Mackenzie Mountains of Canada, deep in the Northwest Territories, around 300 miles from the nearest town of Yellowknife. That's a cool name for a town. Have you ever been to Canada? Yeah, I have actually.

I lived there for six months when I did an exchange program. That's right. I went to Ry ryerson university in toronto a very sheltered uh canadian experience not quite like i imagine the people of yellow you didn't go to yellow knife university study how to catch polar bears yellow knife university is one of those forest traps where the leaves below you fall down into spikes but instead of spikes you fall down into higher education yellow knife university you can be stuck there for 20 30 years before you are wise enough to graduate only five out of every 30 undergraduates actually survives their first year yeah it's a very unforgiving program at yellow knife that's right this is

a long way from toronto as far as i gather at least we are deep in the kind of very northern territories this kind of part of canada really terrifies me this is a part of the world almost completely unexplored by foot i don't want to get too dramatic too early on in this case, but we're basically talking about a kind of Jurassic Park lost world. It's almost inaccessible by foot. Instead, you have to fly or sail in just to get there. Wow. And once you arrive, it's canyons, caves, huge mountain peaks, valleys, forests, and even a waterfall twice the height of Niagara Falls. Wow. This is truly the land that time forgot.

I'm presuming it's quite cold if this is further up north. Cold is all shit. Okay. I looked at the weather patterns. You know, it either goes one of two ways. It's like, you know, one of those places that's cold all the time. This is one of those hell zones where it's like 30 in summer and like minus 60 in winter.

Wow, all right. I mean, that might have been a record temperature, but it definitely, it's around like minus 30, minus 40. So it does get nice. It gets nice for a bit, except not, you know, I wouldn't say nice on account of what's about to happen. Oh God, okay.

But at the same time, the few humans that have lived here throughout the last 10 000 years have told many legends about this place legends that leave their trace to this day on the place names like dead man valley headless creek funeral range these are the places that surround yellow knife head? Headless Range. The last one was Headless Range. No, it was Headless Creek leading to Funeral Range, which U-turns onto Headless Range. Right next to Pain City, Population Death. Which is all situated in, to be clear, Dead Man Valley.

Okay. That's to be expected, I suppose. Does anyone live here in dead man valley i guess they have to or else funeral creek isn't getting a lot of revenue to be fair i don't think this is kind of like a wildlife reserve area this is like a massive kind of canadian wild west reserve area uh the reason i mentioned yellowife is that's the nearest major populated place. I say major. It's like 20,000 people living in a small town there.

But 40,000 knives. Two knives to every person. They don't use dollars, okay? Not even Canadian dollars. They just trade knives. And guess what? The exchange rate's on the floor because everyone's got too many knives. What everyone could do with is actually some food and water yeah but if you want a house you need a knife loan you need the bank to loan you a bag of knives that i guess over 30 40 years

you will gradually proceed to pay them back in knives yeah it's a complicated system 2008 depression it was sad to see people carrying around wheelbarrows full of machetes. But our story begins in more recent times. The gold rush era. In the early 1900s, people all over North America had heard about gold in the Northwestern territories. A pristine, untouched, unexplored land where lucky men could make their fortunes. I could definitely picture it that if you're coming over from, say, Britain or something like that, you want to get involved in gold prospecting.

You know, if you arrive too late to the game, all those famous spots all over America, they're just like, it's goddamn, it's like Disneyland on a Saturday. It's just thousands and thousands of gold prospectors on top of each other wrestling over like gold nuggets the size of sand grains. So everyone's looking for like that next spot. Yeah. And you know, no one's going to go to Death Valley, Funeral Creek, Headless Mountain. Sorry, let's not get it confused. Death Valley is in California.

Oh, right. Dead Man Valley and Funeral Range, very much Canada. Death Valley, the tropical paradise where people are borderline immortal. That's how good the healthcare system is.

It's hard to grow old and die when there's not enough air for you to grow old in. Two men, Willie and Frank McLeod, had been panning for gold traveling all over British Columbia and Alaska.

But when they set foot in the Northern Territories, the locals showed them giant chunks of gold and they decided this was the opportunity they had been waiting for. So, Willie, you said your name was, so where did you guys say you were heading again?

Well, I'll tell you where i'm headed partner to the big league that's where could you be a little more specific willie uber x baby straight to the top the f**k is a uber i'm going to nahanni valley nahanni valley you out of your goddamn mind up by funeral range into dead Man Valley around the corner from Dead Man's Creek? A lot of men have tried to pillage that gold, but not me. Not Willie. This Willie's as hard as it gets. I don't see why you think you're gonna be the one guy to do it when you only got one leg, Willie.

Well, you're not gonna think I'm such a dumbass when I've got one human leg. And one leg made of solid gold. You McCloud brothers, you're so f***ing dumb. You're gonna die up in there like all the other assholes. We're gonna have to name another creek after you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you'll see. You'll all see. So they packed all their worldly possessions and set out by boat to Nahanni Valley to find gold. The months that followed would be a mystery to everyone. This was an era before technology and the two men had to live in the wilderness

and off the land for everything. We're not talking about like a couple days camping. It's kind of blowing my mind to think of like setting out, sure, for this job opportunity, but just as a part of that, you have to survive in the unexplored wilderness. I love it. Just hunting animals.

I want to go right now, man. The thought of like two weeks out in the wild switched off. Just gathering food, eating f***ing beans and sausages. It's not two weeks though. And also you'll run out of beans and sausages pretty quick. So you've got to hunt for your next meal. I'll grab some berries then. Some delicious forest berries. sausages it's not two weeks though and also you'll run out of beans and sausages pretty quick so you gotta hunt for your next meal i'll grab some berries then some delicious forest berries do you know which ones are poisonous the colorful ones i'm pretty sure and then you're just out

there and you're like you don't know what's gold anything could be gold you're just flipping rocks smashing rocks with your bare fist eating beans and berries i don't know as a city boy that sounds like a pretty good deal to me i don't think that's how gold prospecting works you don't like flip over a rock and smash it i mean usually aren't they like panning in rivers that's true yeah with the little the little shaky thing the shaky thing that also sounds kind of fun i haven't panned for gold in the wilderness yeah however i have, I have been to Legoland. You haven't been to death forest? There was a lot of dead Lego men.

Wait, you've been to gold panning in Legoland? Yeah. Just trying to get like yellow bricks? I don't remember what the deal was, but they, for some reason, I don't know what the fuck it had to do with Legos. deal was but they for some reason i don't know what the f**k it had to do with legos but in lego land there was like a root and tootin western zone and you could they gave you a little little gold panning sieve and you went you panned in the river and this thing was they had to make it easy for the kids this thing is you were like lush with gold you were lied. You didn't go to Legoland. You went to a work camp. There's no way.

I think your parents sent you to... We're back in time. There's no way this is Legoland. Your parents told you you were going to Legoland. Yeah, my parents weren't there that evening. And we did have to eat beans and sausages for weeks. It wasn't very fun, actually. I heard Legoland was supposed to be fun.

I'm just imagining you down in the river panning for gold you like look up and you're like lego batman can i have a glass of water and he's like got the full suit on and everything you can barely hear him and he's like so i have to assume that it was fool's gold because there was a lot of it but i felt good about about finding a little bit of gold fools or otherwise um and i got a little taste of what it might have been like to be a old-timey prospector i would love to know what the difference is between fool's gold and regular gold do you want should i find out is it because presumably there has to be some difference beyond the look because they look identical so it it must be like consistency or what you can do with. Oh, right.

I see what you're saying. Yeah. Because who just decided like, no, actually the gold you've got is shit gold. Yeah. I've got the good gold. Oh, oh, that. No, no. You've got fool's gold.

They look identical and can do everything the same. Are you sure? Because it seems like this stuff is harder, longer lasting, cheaper. Looks the same. All right, Da this stuff is harder longer lasting cheaper that's the same all right daft punk your gold is shit mine is the real gold you're a fool yours is like bendy it's expensive as all hell you're you're a fool for trying to peddle me that shit that golden not golden yellow garbage it's pretty shiny though isn't it sure it's pretty shiny because it's trying to fool people into thinking it's gold. It's not going to be black, is it? Actually, that'd be pretty cool. I'm going to start selling black gold as well. What? That's right. Black gold? You mean like this? That is black fool's gold. You fool. This is black gold. That's a rock.

If there's no difference between fool's gold and regular gold, I'm just going to start buying a lot of fool's gold. I'll make like a castle or a hat. Why? You would never make a castle out of regular gold or a hat. Because it's so expensive. That's why. Everyone wants to do it. Of course.

I'd love to eat gold for every meal, but it's too expensive. I guess there's lots of differences i i think that one of the ideas of like why gold is valuable is because it's like good for coating things it's massively reflective um it has like a low melting point it's quite malleable i don't think this has any of those uses although it does look pretty cool in this wikipedia image yeah it does you know what f**k it fool's gold is now the official currency of the this paranormal life commune no regular gold we only trade in fool's gold although i will say one egg is worth 10 000 fool's gold we're saying this word too much

fool's gold i know i hadn't called anything a fool in decades. What a shitty thing to do to call it. Not just like no one who thought they found gold. No one who thought they'd struck gold and was now rich for life needed to be told that it was fool's gold. And you're a moron for thinking that it's gold. It looks a lot like gold. Imagine going down to the bar and being like guys i did it i did it look look what i got you got a whole a bag of shiny yellow gold looking material and you're like we can rejuvenate the whole town we can create a community here and they're like you idiot you've

wasted your time you fool that's not gold you cretin but sure it is worth something i'll buy some off you obviously so unnecessary i know it's not like there's lots of fake leather products you don't call it fool's leather it implies yeah that the person who has it is an idiot it's just fake it has other uses you got fool's airpods those aren't those aren't apple airp No, they're just Google wireless earphones. Yes, fool's AirPods. Yeah, they had to survive off the land in the wilderness. People guessed that they were fighting wild animals, escaping quicksand and jumping huge chasms. But two years later, still, there was no sign of the McLeod brothers.

There had been no glorious return with a f***ing gold leg wearing a gold crown and diamond grills. Were they even still alive? But the rumor began to spread among the other gold prospectors that they hadn't returned because they had hit it big. They had found a gigantic gold mine, something so big they never needed to return. And so they vanished. Talk of this borderline El Dorado golden city spread fast and people became obsessed with the lost McLeod mine. Dozens of other prospectors traveled deep into the valley on foot, trying to retrace their footsteps. I really love the naivety of all these prospectors being like all right the two brothers left two years ago to go to murder town and uh well they haven't they haven't come

back just like everyone that's gone to murder town so i guess they're dead one guy in the corner smoking a pipe or maybe just maybe they found so much gold They went to the moon and everyone's like, he's right to murder town, which I'm assuming is just a ledge that leads down into jagged rocks. It's just a really steep hill with acid at the bottom. I know. And they're like, we can find it guys.

If we all go in the same direction then we split up and try and find the lost mcleod mine timmy you take funeral range i'll take headless valley johnny over there will take dead man's creek and hank since you're the strongest you're gonna take bunny rabbit hill bunny rabbit hill you're out of your mind you think i got a death wish but r Rory, was it all blind hope? Because they had one clue, just one clue to point them in the right direction. One of the McLeod brothers had a habit of carving messages into trees on their travels. Oh, cool.

There was only one find on the trail that read, We have found a fine prospect. That's a lot of carving. Have you ever carved anything in a tree? It is a pain in the ass. Anything more than just initial heart initial. Yeah. Not worth it.

Yeah. Why? What have you been carving in trees? Just like anything really. Smiley faces, my name, like self-portraits and things like that. Yeah. It's tough. It's all the same. Well, you do it on a bonsai tree so it's especially difficult you've just got a chainsaw if i just go really lightly oh it's gone that's another one that one was 500 years old that's a bit of a waste but still with this clue no one find it, and many of the prospectors who tried were never seen

again, dying alone in the wilderness. That is, until a couple of years later, a group of gold prospectors tracing the river through the valley to where the McLeods might have been, made a terrible discovery. They found two bodies, side by side, on the ground beside the river. Unmistakably, the McLeod brothers. Oh boy. There was no McLeod gold mine. They didn't come back simply because they died. But the worst part was they were both headless.

Whoa. Both heads had been removed, nowhere to be seen. The prospector's minds were racing. What could it have been? A bear? Local tribes people or something else the odds of a bear decapitating two men i think is pretty low do you think i don't know a lot about bear attacks but i'm pretty sure they kind of bat you about like a cat with a ball of string until you just kind of die yeah if the revenant has taught me anything yes they're not

like there's a lot of dropping out of the trees like a spec ops agent and taking the head off. You know, they're pretty much just pretty grisly. Pretty meat and potato killers. You know, just there's a lot of thumping. Yeah. I think my instinct with bears is that they just start eating. I've heard that, that they just start eating. Oh, right.

Like you're already dead to them. That's how weak and shit you are. They just hold you down and start eating you've heard that that they just start eating oh right like you're already dead to them that's how weak and shit they just hold you down and start eating you oh that is uh so that wouldn't really line up either because if it was a hungry bear that killed someone why would it leave the body where 90 of the meat is great point just take the head so surely it had to be human activity the only problem was the valley had always been home to the Naha people, which is I guess why it's called the Nahanni Valley, a native North American tribe. But they had vanished from the valley just a few years previously. There was no one living there at all as far as the prospectors knew.

Why had they vanished? Why would they leave? And even more disturbingly, the other tribes in the surrounding areas refused to live there. They actively avoided the valley, claiming that an unknown evil haunts it. So with Headless Valley and all that wasn't bad enough, it is cursed. It's also evil. If you ask the people who've lived there for 10,000 years, they're like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I didn't think it was blessed. So I had a pretty good indication of how bad this place was going in to be fair they could have done

a good little switcheroo you know like the story of oh they call iceland iceland so that no one would go there and they called the shitty one greenland so everyone would think it was green and lush is that really the reasoning behind that's what people say should we fact check this definitely a lot of people tell me this story that the Vikings, you know, they said, oh, this one's Iceland. You don't want to go there. It's harsh and foreboding. We'll take Iceland.

But you guys, you guys can have Greenland. Oh, I see. That's very sneaky. All right. Well, apparently it's not not true. And I can't be bothered reading any further. The day we start fact checking on this paranormal life is the day I die. It's the day that you'll have to fact-check my pulse because I'll have bled out live on air.

So it could have been that the native people, you know, met the Europeans that came over. And they were like, hey natives, is there anywhere good here we should know about to set up camp? And they were like, oh, here? You mean Death Valley? No. should know about to set up camp and they're like oh here uh you mean death valley um no you guys should probably keep going up the road to bunny rabbit hill it's a lot more welcoming death valley is like a tropical paradise like in the background there's like palm trees blowing in the wind there's like kids running around all playing having a good you guys sure it looks pretty nice down there oh a lot of those kids are killers what brutal kill that's why murder town yeah yeah yeah jesus but what did

you say bunny bunny rabbit hit i mean bunny rabbit hill the one i can see lightning literally striking it as we speak fast as a rabbit that's why it's named after it yeah beautiful little paradise there as you can see it's a desert it's desolate it's not a desert don't call it a desert because you can see those two spiky rocks uh in the distance there which a lot of people say actually kind of look like a bunny rabbit's ears so that's cute so uh hop on as you as they say in uh whatever the bunny we called it i love he's forgotten he's boy he's pointing a spear at them at this point i do love the idea of like looking down into death valley and it's just children running around like cutting open coconuts and eating

them it's like the opening sequence to moana everyone's having a great time the nearby denny people said that mysterious creatures lived in the forests of the missing McLeod brothers was only the first of many incidents in this valley. But the mystery of the missing McLeod brothers was only the first of many incidents in this valley. In 1917, a Swiss prospector called Martin Jorgensen had heard the stories of the valley and decided that he would find the fortune that no one else could. Maybe because he was Swiss and knew some alpinism, he quickly adapted to the harsh Jurassic Park level landscape, and so he built a cabin to live in and started a small mining operation. Wow. He's thinking long term here. He's making a little settlement. That's smart. That is smart. But it didn't make sense to any of the other prospectors when shortly after

setting up camp in the valley, Martin's cabin was found inflamed, burned to ashes. And when they searched the building to see if he had escaped in time, they sadly found Martin's skeleton, except with no skull. What? His head had been removed. Okay, so two headless prospectors happens all the time, right?

Just a coincidence. Well, fast forward to 1945 and a miner from Ontario who was just peacefully sleeping in his sleeping bag camping in dead man valley when he was found with uh-oh you guessed it no head oh my god what the hell is going on here look you said it sure one prospector two prospector found decapitated if i had a fool's gold dollar for every time i found a decapitated prospect i had a fool's dollar just a pokemon card but this is getting a little

suspicious it is i've got too many fool's dollars because this is happening a few too many times what we need to find out is what is causing this is this we've heard it's cursed before but i curse is usually you know mean that something unfortunate befalls the people who are residing within the area of the curse the curse isn't like a dude that walks up and decapitates someone it's very strange for a curse to affect a group of people in the exact same way yeah it's a weird one like i think i mean they did talk about it being cursed but i think that could have been a translation thing i mean the native people did say something along the lines of an evil an unknown evil haunts the the valley so right it could be that they're describing a spirit or being or beast now is not the time to be ambiguous you

shouldn't be like watch out for the curse of the valley and you're like okay well what's the curse and it's like well the curse is there's these monkeys that eat heads it's like well that's not a curse is it if you had given us the heads up we could have brought knives for the monkeys tell us about the monkeys don't tell us about the curse tell us about the monkeys that eat human head with that yeah because now we're out in the woods we've got a bunch of sage and a priest he doesn't know why he's here and i don't even know steve do you know he's dead his head's gone fantastic you killed steve the priest oh great my head's gone now my head is on the floor i can still talk but it's on the floor We've talked about it before in this paranormal life. You know, you should just make a sign.

Make a sign that gets the basic amount of information across. Murderous headhunting beast ahead. Something like that. A couple words. I guess there's also the chance that this is possibly a Last Crusade style Indiana Jones trap. a Last Crusade style Indiana Jones trap, where I believe, if you remember that movie, they have to go through the trials to reach the Holy Grail.

And I think it's the first one, which is like kneel in the face of, oh, the humble man. It's something about like the humble man will be the one that passes through. And you have to go down on one knee. And obviously, if you don't, the blades from the side come across and completely cut off your head i think they cut off the head of like three guys beforehand which was pretty insane that that they were sending in nazis and heads were rolling back out and they were like all right send in another one and another head and they didn't think that the head was getting cut off when they were coming in here.

If that was, if I was like the third person to go in, I am wiggling like a worm. Yeah. And not even through that first trial, through all the trials. There's some sort of vertical deadly elevation issue in this space. Yeah. I'm going to stay down just to play safe. Even the third trial, the leap of faith of faith you know where it's the hidden path i am worming my way across that when i get to the final chamber where it's the knight of templar

guarding the grails i am i'm wiggling around in the dirt through that entrance if he wants me to drink from a cup he's gonna have to hand it to me because i'm not leaving the ground the second i stand up to get that son of a bitch my head rolls all the way back out three trials and straight to the Nazis. Listen, all the booby traps they had were knife based. Yeah. That was all like, that was the worst thing they could do to you was throw a knife at you, at your head. Also, I think the wrong cups made you age like a thousand years in a second,

which was pretty cool. That was paranormal. But like we said in the beginning, part of what makes this story so mysterious is the fact that this valley is so unexplored this has led some to believe that we're looking at again cannot stress this enough a jurassic park lost world style realm where hot springs have created a lush valley, where Sasquatch lives in peace, and species believed to be extinct still survive. Maybe even other kinds of cryptids. Right.

This may all sound fantastical, but the Naha people who lived in the valley did talk about one creature that seems to defy science and God. The Wahila. The Wahila is considered an evil spirit that takes the form of a giant wolf and that possesses supernatural powers. The Naha knew and feared this evil spirit

because time and time again, they had seen it kill and take the head of its victims. Oh. But despite their long, fearful relationship with the beast, the reason that we know about the Wahila is thanks to a modern, first-hand sighting. In the 1960s, a young mechanic from Michigan named Frank Graves, which is a kind of funny person to investigate funeral range to be honest, he set out an expedition to the Northwestern

territories, inspired by a book he read about the Abominable Snowman, one of the first books to ever discuss the possibility of Bigfoot in North America. So he's already got the right stuff on his mind. Yeah. He's not going to like backpack around Canada and, you know, experience new food and new cultures. He's going to find cryptids. I love the idea of being inspired by a book so you just start an expedition what a different time it was although the 1960s is not even that long ago no it's not by why what would you get inspired by today a vlog yeah what's good yeah a travel vlog it's so boring now yeah well you definitely had to use your imagination back in the day yeah like i definitely mentioned to you before like one of the last big holidays that that um me and my fiance did was uh

go to japan we watched a lot of travel vlogs before going a lot of amazing vloggers who just show off the best spots the things you need to check out but it got to the point like a few months outside of going i was like we're ruining this for ourselves. We've seen everything and we're not going for like three months. Whereas back in the day, like you had to use all your imagination. Yeah. The first guy to ever see a rhino had to draw the rhino and then mail that letter to London where they showed they printed that shitty drawing drawing of a rhino may i add in every paper and everyone was like oh my god these these foreign beasts yeah and they're like well there

must be this must be like a smudge or something right because he's got a horn on the front of his head and he's like that's what they look like it's crazy over here you could basically go in vr to anywhere on street view in the world right now yeah and explore it yourself i could put on cardboard vr goggles and hug a rhino right now if i wanted to and get gored by a rhino yeah it's a shame yeah i think uh definitely in the 1960s and before then there was just more of a sense of adventure. There was like more of the world that was still unknown and unexplored. Well, it's funny you mention. So Frank found a crew of four men to accompany him into the wilderness. And they were all from the American Expeditionary Society.

So we think of the 1960s as being maybe a bit more of an adventurous time. But really really exploration was already dead by then too. These students at university had to set up an expedition society just to do it. They were trying to like reignite the flames of expedition in society. I love it, that's badass. And so Frank's team took boats up the river into the valley and established base camp at Virginia Falls, somewhere they could explore from. And on one of these expeditions, walking along a trail, they heard a rustling in the bushes. Thinking it was one of the hunting dogs coming to join them again, Frank didn't raise his gun at the bush,

so his guard was done when a huge white beast leapt out at him. At first he thought he was looking at a polar bear, but as his eyes adjusted to what was in front of him, he realized it looked more like a giant wolf with a huge flat head and short ears. Graves didn't hesitate to draw his 12 gauge and unload both barrels into the beast. Except it didn't even flinch. Jesus! The pellets pierced and ricocheted, but the demon didn't miss a beat. It 180'd and made back for the forest, sparing Graves' life that day.

Giving him just enough time to load his 12 gauge once more and go for round two but again the beast didn't even notice and it vanished into the woods as graves collected his thoughts about what he had just seen one of the native american guides returned from the woods to join him and asked what had just happened as graves told him everything that happened, the guide's face went white and he demanded that they immediately leave the area by boat. He explained that this was no ordinary animal. It was a huge, deadly, rare beast from the north that came to the Mackenzie Mountains once a year. But crucially, Graves wasn't the only one to have seen this the denny people and the non-native visitors to this area have reported a handful of sightings throughout history and whilst no one saw

it firsthand take someone's head it's definitely big enough to is that part of its lore that it that it takes people yeah like i said the naha people they they believed that there was this prehistoric cryptid style wolf spirit that would take people's heads. That is badass. So pretty nuts that we do have some Native American lore that is seemingly being confirmed by a firsthand sighting from a cryptid hunter. Yeah, and then backed up by the people who know actually about this part of the world. Yeah. I like what I'm hearing, guys. So, in some ways, we have a pretty strong case

for some kind of head-stealing cryptid. Yeah. However, as always on This Paranormal Life, I would be remiss if I didn't mention some of the other theories about what is happening in the Nahanni Valley. Some people thought that the murders and beheadings might have been caused by local Native Americans, who, correctly assessing that white people were

coming to take their shit, might have killed the intruders. Of course, I did say the valley was abandoned, but it's not impossible that small communities hid in the Jurassic Park-sized lost world in this valley. And lastly, there is one one final very human potential suspect in all of this the mad trapper of rat river that's the worst name i've ever heard the mad trapper of rat river you just know he's gonna ruin the story he's already gonna we were just talking about a beautiful majestic forest spirit with a wolf heart and now it's either him or dirt greg from rat town it's basically a meth head or it's princess mononoke's wolf from the film in 1931 a local trapper working in this area complained to the local authorities that someone was tampering with his traps and suspected that the mad trapper of Rat River who

lived on the hill was the criminal. This guy was a mad recluse who lived in a cabin in the woods and when the police went to his cabin to question him about tampering with the traps he simply shot a shotgun through the door that they were knocking, almost killing one officer, and fled into the forest. Another trap activated! It's not a trap if you just shoot me at point-blank range. Through a door? And so a 150-mile on-foot police chase ensued

through the Yukon and the Northwest Territories until they finally cornered the mad trapper at Eagle River, Yukon. And they shot him down on the spot. So he died? He did. Okay. Now, crucially, in his possessions, they found gold teeth belonging to men who had gone missing in the Nahanni Valley. Whoa. So this doesn't prove he killed anyone.

He may have just found their skulls or fragments of their skulls. Right. And, you know, Doug, he lives in Rat River. He's going to be digging things out of skulls and bones. There's no way he's not drinking the waters of Rat River. He sounds like a maniac but it does leave an uneasy possibility that someone like that could have killed our prospectors to take their shit it's true it does seem a little strange obviously if he is uh going for gold teeth it seems like a lot of effort to kill the prospectors. And then take their heads.

As if that would be the fastest way to do it. Yeah. Because you're not exactly like under pressure. To get that job done quick. You're not going to bump into anyone else in that wilderness. Unless I mean. Like. Here's some wilderness bro science.

If you like murdered someone. And spilled blood in the wilderness. Are those bears coming to find you? Also I'm very up for the term bro science if you like murdered someone and spilled blood in the wilderness are those bears coming to find you also i'm very up for the term bro science for a section of our podcast i can't believe we've been doing this show for this long and we haven't talked because this show is bro science yeah straight up let's talk bro science if you kill someone in the woods yeah can a bear smell it and track you down is that that's like clapping this is the bro version of if a tree falls in the forest if i die in the woods will my bros have to cut off my head and bring it back to society in case

they get attacked by a bear is that the the time pressure on killing someone in that that you activate like a bear's radar yeah well i don't think they're predator i mean bears aren't like in in the trees looking down at the humans it's like a shark they smell the blood in the water do they well sharks do but i don't know if bears do but presumably that's because i don't even know how this is some real bro science coming at you here bro science i don't know if that's because I don't even know how this is some real bro science coming at you here. Bro science. I don't know if that's true. You know, people like, you know, a shark can smell blood from 100 miles the second it hits the water. I don't think that's how that works because that's magic.

That's a that's not a shark. That's a wizard in shark's clothing. You think a shark's a wizard? That's your problem. I think it still works there's no way that the like the material talking to the you're talking to the trainer at like sea world there's no way i'm obviously drunk you're cutting open your hand and dipping it in the pool there's no way he's gonna know what's going on it eats your arm a thousand starfish jump out of their tanks oh not a shark though interesting

you dumbass i yeah i don't know if i thought obviously maybe it works with sharks right because of how blood uh it dilutes through and spreads through water i don't know if like the scent of blood can activate a bear uh as with most questions like this on this paranormal life i refuse to look it up uh bear experts in this paranormal life nation feel free to at us regarding this i do not know there doesn't seem to be a time pressure so why would he take the head exactly i guess you can't really uh question the decisions of the mad trapper Rat River. Yeah.

The name alone kind of would lead you to believe that anything he does is going to be without reason. But I will say the fact that he is cutting gold teeth out of people's dead heads doesn't bode well for the McLeod lost gold mine. No. No. There's gold in these woods the gold found in that valley shouldn't be gold ganged from the mouths of the prospectors that went to find who aren't even from the valley they were trying to find more gold so the only gold that has ever been in the valley was in the teeth of the man who traveled there jesus that's beautiful man that's beautiful the gold was

inside us all along literally our hearts no your teeth get them white wolf it's real so we have a number of possibilities here some paranormal some not so and at the end of every episode of this paranormal life, we have to decide, is the paranormal explanation the one that sticks? Is the Nahanni Valley cursed? Is there a Wahila cryptid murdering those who set foot in the valley? Does a Sasquatch or any other cryptids live there? What are you saying?

Interesting case. I love it. I love the colorful background and the characters that we're looking at today. We do have the luxury this week of a number of different options we do have the mad trapper of rat river i wish we didn't but we do which i assume is like a long long descendant from sock rats just a is a horrible person ignorant disgusting person who yeah sure there is a case to be made here that they are involved but correct me if i'm wrong that you did say he was hunted down and shot to swiss cheese

yes so he was essentially killed so even if he was the person behind it it would be in a paranormal form presumably that's true interesting ghost or curse or spirit um one thing i never actually thought about was actually the mad trapper i keep wanting to call him the mad hatter mad trapper of rat river he actually it seems like died well before some of these later disappearances yeah so even if he explains the mcleod brothers he doesn't explain say the swiss prospector or the mechanic from michigan so we have some prospectors to the mcleod brothers that were killed while and decapitated while he was alive yeah but then he was killed and we still have more decapitations after he was killed. All right. So I think presumably that means we can rule him out.

Yes. As the sole cause of decapitations. So folks, if this is happening and there is a pattern, maybe we are looking at something paranormal here. It is true. We're essentially left with, is it paranormal? And it's the Wehila or some kind of curse? Or is it the final human possibility is some pocket of humans somewhere in here killing intruders?

Yeah, I think I'm edging towards the latter. Only because, you know, if it is some paranormal creature, or as we said, some spirit of the forest taking form of a giant wolf as we said even with bears there'd usually be a little more wear and tear a little more destruction you know if it sounds like these people basically had their heads cut off and that's how they were killed they weren't like clawed at ripped to shreds you know there isn't there they didn't find paw prints around the ground you know anything like that that we see with cryptid cases you know there isn't there they didn't find paw prints around the ground you know anything like that that we see with cryptid cases you know there's usually scratches on things paw prints anytime we're dealing with like a monster or a big cat let's say that is kind of

true it also potentially rules out the possibility that this is just some type of actual wolf yeah so so it would yeah it would have to be more of some kind of you know native american spirit beast that doesn't leave paw prints yeah he can just kind of drop down like spider-man and one one little swoop and you're done give him an upside down spider-man kiss and then chop off their head love him and leave him yeah i don't know i think uh for me this week personally i i don't have the evidence required to make this a fully convincing paranormal case very interesting but i think i think it's going to be a no from me this week i think it's a double no guys but i would love to hear what you guys think about it if you have any insight to this if you've been to the nahanni

valley if you um have been affected by the wahila let us know at this paranormal life podcast at gmail.com when was the last time we had a yes it feels like we're going through a little dry spout of yeses yeah it wasn't that long ago like we had a string we had like three in a row at one point we did we went like we went full super saiyan just pulled it out of the bag and did a few in a row but um it's been a couple months for sure all right all right we can work on that you can work on that i got a great one coming up oh yeah yeah yeah it's gonna be a double yes and if you just can't wait till next week to get another this paranormal life investigation in your life head on over to

patreon.com forward slash this paranormal life where from five dollars a month you get access to a backlog of bonus episodes these are full-length investigations that we do not put on the main feed they are exclusive to patrons there's some fantastic investigations on in there some of our favorites some really interesting close calls and then some really wild hilarious ones i mean in recent memory we did a a ritual live on the podcast yeah um to try and get to some kind of parallel hell dimension no spoilers about how that turned out but look at the world around you uh you know we're in fool's world now we've been scammed we did that episode the night of donald trump's uh victory in 2016 and just to give you a little preview if you haven't heard them before a preview of what

our bonus episodes are like this is a clip from last month's bonus episode but as i said this is the house of 200 demons we've got a lot of these bastards to get through it's like scrooge's christmas they're just showing up one by one a big conveyor belt of demons yeah scrooge actually wasn't that bad a guy if just three ghosts showed up to teach him to be a better man they were all human ghosts yeah if your christmas carol involves 200 demons appearing to you in one night christmas the night of christmas eve you are a bad it's too late to change this is the punishment they're not here to for to redeem you they're not they don't even talk they just start whooping your ass as soon as they come out of the other dimension Can you imagine being being Scrooge go into bed on Christmas Eve?

You know Oh the Marley brothers told me that I'd be visited by ghosts in the night and then the light shines through and you're like Oh my gosh, you open up and you see like the smoke rolling in you're like Spectre Are you here to teach me about? The lessons of Christmas past and then the smoke clears and it's just this little imp boy he's not even dressed as santa claus he's just got a fiery little red hot poker jabbing you with it he has a weapon that's all the intent you need to know oh man i crack myself up sometimes those are really the best episodes so remember head on

over to patreon.com forward slash this paranormal life to check that out and at the end of every episode we like to take the time to shout out those who've supported us on patreon let's go special thank you to dan jenkins dan jenkins has 10 kids he's got 10 kids 10 little rug rats running around yeah that's a lot of kids in this day and age it's a lot of kids i think he was going for that old school you know if i have enough of them they'll be able to support uh their old man they're gone they left yeah they left day one they hate him yeah thank you also to mikhail shulgin well if it isn't mikhail shotgun shulgin The fastest and sharpest shooter in the west. Only with a shotgun though so needs a lot of spray. A lot of spray. It's not a good gun to be

fast with. Maybe like a revolver is pretty good. A shotgun you pretty much have one to two rounds and you're and you're done. Yeah well that's all he needs. One. He cut off the other barrel because he needs one. Thank you to Catherine Peterson. Catherine's always letting cats in. She keeps every window of the house open. Tuna on every windowsill. She's borderline baiting them to come into this house. She's a local drug dealer of cat nip.

Of course. And I'm not going to complain because she invites me over all the time. And it's just a cuddle puddle. You can just roll around the cats. I'm sure if she's cats pretty crazy operator cat cafe that would make a lot of sense that would also explain the money that i owe her thank you to mikas venkales mikasa s2 casa mikas the doors are open the tuna is on the windowsill help yourself my friend so watch out for the cats though if they see you going for that tuna they will attack thank you to Ryan Brooks

Ryan Brooks is the guy you get in to cook the books if you want the money to say that it f***ing disappeared I don't know how to cook the books I don't know what that means

if you want those books with some barbecue sauce and a side salad then get ryan involved because he'll cook them right up for you thank you to liam liam liam wouldn't want to be him because much like the people of yellow knife he has knives for hands and knives for feet it's very hard for him to walk or move or get on a transatlantic flight. It's frustrating because if he had a Swiss Army knife for each hand or foot, he would be a lot more useful. But knives, you can only cut things. It's a shame because people judge him, you know,

because you got knives for hands. But deep down, he's got a heart of knives. That's right, his heart is also knives. Thank you to kimberly boomer okay boomer oh god kimberly is a number one zoomer she's a tiktok star she is dunking on boomers all day long on social media that's cool she actually dunked on us pretty hard which i feel pretty embarrassed about i'm not a boomer i don't want to be classified that way kimberly but um how old do you think i am well she's nine so she thinks everyone's a boomer thank you to coleman tinker do you know what coleman mines for

fool's gold oh i thought it was gonna be something with Tinker. Or Cole. No, Fool's Gold. Coleman figured out that if you... You can sell this stuff on the street for a pretty high price if you just remove the fools from the advertising. Yeah, but of course... Just call it gold. Might I remind you, Coleman, that Fool's Gold is the currency in the paranormal commune. We don't want your regular gold.

Get that shit out of here. Thank you to Lydia Steyer. ghouls gold is the currency in the paranormal commune. We don't want your regular gold. Get that shit out of here. Thank you to Lydia Steyer. Lydia Steyer will give you a starring contest. Ooh. But she never loses because she has a third eye. That doesn't, but presumably it also has to blink. Well, it does.

Yes, it's a spiritual paranormal third eye, but yes, it does have to blink. But between all three eyes, one of them's not blinking at any one time. But as long as they all blink once. Moving on. Thank you to Nickmon12. Nickmon was a Digimon originally cut from the manga series for being a little too violent. Because when he Digivolved, he became a knife what just a knife not even sentient you know you have all those different levels of digivolving as well yeah like he just got bigger

and bigger types of knives yeah which was you know really dangerous because he would just jump and then midair turn to knife and come down and just impale someone so i can see why you're caught terrifying thank you too dark slayer tv that's one of those tv channels that only appears at like 3 a.m on a on a tv where you're using a coat hanger as an antenna you know in an abandoned motel you're in a hotel room yeah yeah yeah it's some and it's all basically static. Flashing images. Some creepy paranormal stuff. Thank you to Aaron Jones.

Aaron Jones is the most baseball player name I've ever heard in my life. There is no way, sir, that you are not a baller. A baseballer. Aaron Jones. You're not a basketballer. Are you out of your mind? Aaron Jones. Get us tickets to the next game, my friend.

Please. You're obviously a baseball player. I don't want to hear all this. I don't play baseball. I'm a kid. I'm 14. Just send us the tickets and an autographed bat. Thank you to Chad Brewer.

Chad Brewer? Next up, batting for the New York Yankees, Chad Brewer. That's right. We're talking about an MLB star here, folks. There's no way Chad's not a baller. And you know he's batting 6-0. And you know he's getting sent off early. I love it.

I hope this next name is going to be another big baseball star. Thank you to Isaac Baldridge. Oh. I was hoping for like a roided out baseball hall of famer. Isaac? Isaac could be a tennis player or maybe something like that. Or maybe a pool player. Yeah. He's technically a baller

if you play pool balls. Isaac, have you ever even tried man? Have you ever even tried like Little League or something? If you change your name you could be good. Isaac is a badass name. I will say. Think about Newton. He was a be good. Isaac is a badass name, I will say. Think about Newton. He was a baller.

He had a f***ing apple. Thank you to Whitney Taylor. Whitney Taylor? MLB MVP? Batted 4-Hundo last season? 4-Hundo. It is an honor, Whitney. It sounds like a lot. Whitney, if you're available for

mentorships i know a young man named isaac who is looking doesn't know shit about the game and he doesn't want to know shit thank you to haddle mcsnattle come on down to haddle mcsnattle saddles where we can saddle anything you want any animal you want you want to ride on a turtle done boom we got a saddle for that did i get could i get I get a saddle? Could I just get a saddle to fit- Any old saddle. My size? You know, like 5'11"? What? A saddle for a- I need to be able to- no, not to ride me, but so I can sit on it and it fits me.

You sick f***. No, you can't get a saddle for a man. I'll give you a saddle for any- I'll give you a saddle- you can- you can ride an antelope into the sunset if you want but i will not ride a man okay i don't want to antelope can i just get a horse saddle we don't have any horse saddles here great great good business model okay thank you to nina mckendry nina inventor of the nina col. Let's write her very own cocktail. It is delicious. It is boozy. It is basically... I'm not gonna lie. It's a pint of Lombardi with a slice of pastrami. Jesus. There's no way

that can be good. You mix it all up in a blender, and you gotta do it fast, because the Lombardi will dissolve the interior of a blender in seconds, really. And you just... You just put it in a beer bong and funnel it. Nina, why would you put your name to this? Thank you to Jen Bottom.

Jen Bottom is top of the batting order because this home run hitter can't keep balls in the park. She's trying to keep them in the park? She tried to bunt last season and hit it into the car park she's a machine she is literally i'm telling you right now she's a machine they're questioning whether they should ban her from the league oh she's not human she's not a human being thank you to duncan barnett mr barnett they They call him Duncan because he's casually dunking himself into the MLB Hall of Fame. Wow.

Using a basketball term to conquer baseball. I love it. He is catching every ball. He's hitting every ball out of the park. He's confused with what to do with the balls. Yeah. Simply one of the greatest of all time it's kind of interesting that all these middle-aged retired basketball or baseball superstars are uh listening

to this show but you know i am i encourage it i guess it's spread you gotta have something playing in the dugout thank you lastly but not leastly to emma moran emma's always putting more in than she's taken out she's a saint like that. She gives us gold. We give her fool's gold in return. And you know, a lot of people say that's a bad deal for her. But to those people I say,

shut the f*** up. Don't tell her what to do with her money. If she wants to give more in, then we'll take it. We'll keep taking it. And because she keeps giving more in, we can take it we'll keep taking it and because she keeps giving more in we can keep doing this podcast dark note to end it on but thank you to everyone dark that's not dark don't thank you shame her generosity thank today and everyone we are yet to thank on patreon we'll be back next tuesday with a brand new paranormal tale we'll see you then bye