In Search of...

This summer we had a lot of anchorages to ourselves. In part this was because we were cruising earlier than most of the seasonal crowd, but lagged behind the speedier 'Glacier Bay or bust' cruisers. We enjoyed the solitude but sometimes the atmosphere at night could be a little eerie. I remember one evening as dusk settled and we could no longer see the shore. Something started splashing very loudly on the beach. It was probably just a deer or bear, but since we couldn't see it our imaginations had us believing it was something big and toothy which planned on swimming out to the boat to get us while we slept. We were also surrounded by the sound of breathing. We hoped it was just seals.

I think part of my tendency to seek out the spookiness of my environment can be blamed on the fact that as a young child I loved to watch the t.v. show "In Search of..." narrated by Leonard Nimoy. The show explored unexplained mysteries and phenomenon; UFOs, Bigfoot, the Bermuda Triangle, disappearances of people like Amelia Earhart. The show would scare me silly and I enjoyed it immensely.

Fast forward to just a few weeks ago. I was in a bookstore in Haines, AK and overheard a conversation about a book titled "The Strangest Story Ever Told". After she sold the last copy in stock to another customer, I chatted with the store clerk and found out a little about the tale, which took place in Thomas Bay. I later tracked down my own copy to buy. It is a historical narrative about the encounters several different miners had with 'devil creatures', and other mysterious happenings in the vicinity of Thomas Bay. As I mentioned in my previous post, we had anchored in Thomas Bay. Reading this book and remembering our evening spent there was a little like being a kid again listening to Leonard Nimoy telling of strange and disturbing events. Most enjoyable. You can read an excerpt here. Hallucinations caused by "loneliness and morbid thought", or something else? http://www.bigfootencounters.com/stories/harrycolp.htm