Today we delve into the Valley of the Headless Men. But before that we’ll also discuss the tombstones that will decide the end of the world, the favorite songs of the demons in hell, and what happens when you neglect to tell your child a WW2 Nazi died in their bedroom.

The News:

WW2 Nazi Ghost in Child’s Bedroom

Tombstones that will End the World

The Songs Sung in Hell

TRANSCRIPT:
Hello, probably cursed listeners. This is your host, Chris.

I’m Sheryl. And for today’s Curse-O-Meter testing, we will tell the story of the Valley of the Headless Men, but before that, we’ll also discuss the tombstones that will decide the end of the world, the favorite songs of the demons in hell, and what happens when you neglect to tell your child a World War II Nazi died in their bedroom. Freddie is not okay with that. Nope, he doesn’t want to know.

Too bad. As we do at the start of every episode, we will calibrate the Lord-Kanarvan Curse-O-Meter in preparation for our main topic. We’ll do this by feeding it three news stories from recent news to determine the cursedness level of them.

I’ll activate the Curse-O-Meter now. I have the first story. The title is Pennsylvania Tombstones, Slowly Inching Together May End the World Legend Claims.

This is by Claudia de Miro for Penn Live. In Allegheny County, two tombstones dedicated to long gone lovers have a legend attached to them by locals. They move slowly toward each other under the light of a full moon. When they finally touch, it is said the world will end. How are they sure that they’re lovers? You know, I’m not sure. Okay. Maybe they wrote it on the tombstones and it was like, this is Frank, lover of Sally on Sally’s tombstone says, this is Sally, lover of Frank.

Fair. And then they had, or they just had, I’m with them and they had the arrow. What if they’ve got like magnets and they’re just slowly inching together via magnets? Why did we build tombstones out of magnets?

Continue. In his book, Haunted Roads of Western Pennsylvania, author Thomas White describes the paranormal activity surrounding Erwin Road, also known as Blue Mist Road, because of the eerie fog that often envelops it. It’s had a history of having a whole bunch of legends attached to it, says White. Today, the road is mostly closed, but is said to be haunted by the ghosts of a family killed in a car crash, who push cars up the incline. This is similar to Gravity Hill and Fairview Township. There are also rumors of devil worshipers and strange creatures lurking in the area. And one of the most intriguing features of the road is a cemetery at its far northern end, along Route 910, called Crossroad Cemetery. It’s where you can bury vampires. I bet there’s like a big hill there because they keep burying more and more vampires. And then the road just keeps getting higher and higher.

That sounds like a good call. And this is where a pair of grand looking tombstones stand. Since the 70s, the story has been that originally the tombstones had basically stayed in the same position.

Then, under a full moon at midnight, the stones would lean together and touch briefly. Over the decades as public fears evolved, the legends surrounding Blue Mist Road grew more ominous. In the 90s, a new story emerged about the tombstones and their role in the end times. It was that the stones were ever so slightly inching each other.

And when they would finally touch, the world would end. And it seems kind of a big consequence for an urban legend on a suburban road. But essentially, what the case was as we approached the year 2000, it was reflecting this growing sense of religious and secular apocalypticism pervading American culture. There’s almost always an apocalyptic movement going on, White said. He explained that it signifies a fear of an uncertain future and a sense of helplessness, especially if that future seems bleak. Interestingly, once the world didn’t end and enough time had passed, White noted that the legend of the tombstones returned to its original romantic theme, while the apocalyptic legend persisted and even gained traction in 2012 with the Mayan calendar’s end of the world prediction. The stones are indeed getting closer together. However, Thomas pointed out that there are reasonable explanations for many of the strange occurrences at Blue Mist Road.

The movement of the tombstones, for example, is likely due to the ground beneath them sinking. But I’ll tell you this about Blue Mist Road, White said. I’ve been there about a hundred times and each time something strange happens. Road trip.

Road trip. They had a photo in the article and indeed both tombstones are leaning towards each other. And they’re kind of like the tall kind. Okay, good to know. I’ll have to look that up later. Okay, this title is The Priest Who Died and Went to Hell says he saw a demon singing Umbrella by Rihanna.

Awesome. This is by Ryan Price for her.ie. Maybe a relative of Vincent Price.

I sure hope so. A priest who briefly died after heart attack claims that during his near-death experience, demons tormented him by singing Umbrella by Rihanna. Same. And Don’t Worry Be Happy by Bobby McFerrin as a form of torture. That is sort of a funny song to sing as you’re torturing someone.

It sure is. Why Umbrella though? Just too catchy in hell. I mean, it’s very repetitive.

Bird would love it. Michigan-based pastor Gerald Johnson recounted passing through the gates of hell where he said demons performed karaoke to him. Wait, why is he going to hell? He’s a priest.

Or pastor, rather. He does go into it later on. Okay, okay.

He speculates on why he wound up there. Okay, good. Johnson believes that his 2016 encounter with Satan demonstrates that popular music is a tool used by the devil to control people on Earth. I knew it. Nickelback. You pull off that Chad Kroger beard and he’s got a devil beard underneath.

That’s fair. In a video posted to TikTok, Johnson shared his bizarre experience claiming he will never be the same after it. Yeah, that was probably hell. I assume hell has a life-changing experience.

I would hope so. I thought I was going upward because I thought I had done so much good in this lifetime and helped so many people and made so many decisions that were godly decisions. He said, But as opposed to me going up, I went down. I went literally into the center of the Earth. That’s where hell is. Just in case you didn’t know. So the molten core of Earth is made of demons. Hmm, that’s what makes it go.

Yeah, I guess so. After entering hell, Johnson described facing cruel punishments including demonic renditions of Rihanna’s umbrella and Bobby McFerrin’s Don’t Worry Be Happy. It just blew me away.

It baffles me to this day, Johnson continued. I like Rihanna. I want you to like later put into chat the like AI software that makes songs, demonic rendition of Rihanna’s umbrella and see what happens. It just blew me away. It baffles me to this day, Johnson continued. There was a section in hell where music was playing. It was the same music we hear on Earth, but opposed to entertainers singing it, it was demons singing it. While up here we listen to music and get over a breakup like Don’t Worry Be Happy or Umbrella, but down there every lyric to every song is torment.

I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. Johnson also revealed witnessing a gruesome scene of a man being burned alive. Things that I saw there were indescribable.

It makes me emotional, he said. His eyes were bulging and worse than that he was wearing chains on his neck. It was a demon holding the chain. He concluded his story by explaining that the reason he was sent to the depths of hell was due to having unforgiveness in his heart towards those who had wronged him. You gotta forgive people or you go straight to hell.

I guess so. God doesn’t send people to hell. People send themselves to hell, he says. He’s taking a little bit of personal responsibility there. I mean, it’s a good thing for him to acknowledge.

And luckily he has a second chance now. Yeah, maybe that’s like if hell is a real place and you wind up there. You do have that first thought in your head. It’s like, oh, this is because I kicked a puppy. Yeah, that’s fair.

I’ve not kicked a puppy. Please do not cancel me. I will load in the third and final story to the Curse-O-Meter here for final calibration. Norwegian princess claims ghost of Nazi general who shot himself in her bedroom tried to strangle her.

This is written by Zara Kaleek from mirror.co .uk. Princess Martha Louise, daughter of Norway’s King Harold, has claimed that she was haunted by the ghost of a Nazi SS general who committed suicide in her bedroom. Sounds legit. The 52 year old recounted the chilling experience on the modern royalty podcast describing how she was allegedly throttled by the ghost of Waffen SS general Wilhelm Redis. Redis? It’s probably Redis. Redis had resided at the royal family’s Skogum castle during the German occupation of Norway in World War II.

He took his own life with a self-inflicted gunshot wound on 8th of May 1945 as the third Reich collapsed in Norway. Martha Louise revealed that as a teenager she was regularly haunted by Redis. The former general is said to have appeared in her bedroom every night staring at her. Whoa, he needs to stop staring at children.

Yeah, just leave the teenage girls alone. You’re already a Nazi, you’re bad or not. She told the podcast, When I moved into this room I became terribly afraid of the dark and there was a man staring at me. She added, I told everyone every night my nannies or my parents would look behind the curtains, pull them back and say, Look, there was no one behind the curtains.

There’s no one here. Sneaky Nazis. Martha admitted she did not learn the full horrifying truth about her haunting until years later when her father, now King Harold V, revealed the room’s disturbing history, she recounted. When I spoke about the paranormal experience with my father, he told me, Oh, that’s the room where the Nazi general took his own life. Just one thing we forgot to tell you. Hope it’s okay.

Martha Louise reacted with disbelief saying, It’s only now that you are telling me this. I guess it’s a hard decision as a father. It’s like, do you tell your kid that an evil man shot himself in there? If I know that information and my kid is saying that they’re seeing someone in their room staring at them, I’m going to believe my child. I already know that information. So I’m just going to assume that the kid is definitely seeing something.

Yeah. And it’s funny because they’re the royal family. What’s to say that it’s not a real guy standing in her room at night? Oh yeah, that’s true. But don’t just be like, uh-huh, nothing there and ignore your child. It could be one of those, like, the Froggers, the people who live inside your house while you’re living there.

Yeah. Radisse, who lived in Norway in luxury following the 1940 invasion, was Adolf Hitler’s right-hand man in the country. He was responsible for the mass deportation of Jewish Norwegians to death camps.

World War II expert Asbjorn Svarrstad has confirmed that Radisse was found dead on a sofa in what would later become the princess’s bedroom when she was just 14 years old. Wow. Not cool looking, Harold. That’s true. I mean, I guess you’ve got to use the murder room for something. It can’t just be a room sitting empty. Yeah, but maybe you don’t put your kids in that room.

Maybe you’d be like, you know what, this is where the servants live. Yeah. We’re turning into a rec room. Yeah.

Put a pool table in there. Yeah. The calibration phase is complete. We’re going to get our Lord Kanarvan Curse-O-Meter to spit out the results for those three new stories we just covered. Please stand by.

And the results for the first new story about the tombstones slowly inching together that may trigger the end of the world? Probably benign. I agree. Since the story kind of goes back and forth depending on how pessimistic people are feeling. Yeah, it just kind of feels like nobody really knows what the real story is.

They just kind of made the story up. And depending on how fast the world ends as a process, would we even know? Would they just touch and then the earth would just wink out in a puff of dust? Yeah, good question. Or would the whole thing rumble and then we would all turn to dust like in Avengers Infinity War? It’s kind of already happening, so.

That’s true. Things are on fire. We should check on those tombstones.

Yeah. And the second story, the results for the priest who died, went to hell and saw a demon singing Rihanna. The results are probably blessed. He learned a valuable lesson about forgiving people.

It’s true. And he went to hell and he left hell. I assume a lot of people get to leave hell. That’s true. And on top of that, he is never going to listen to Umbrella or don’t worry, be happy again.

Sounds like he’s not going to listen to any music ever again. I mean, I went through that phase. It’s fine.

You grew out of it. Yeah. At least popular music. Maybe he will only hire minstrels from now on to sing for him. And not popular bands. Like, what if he was like, oh well, I’m going to listen to Christian music, but then the band becomes too popular and he’s just got to stop listening to them.

They’re too popular. And the results for the news story about the princess being strangled by a Nazi, a ghost Nazi. Definitely cursed.

Definitely cursed. Just don’t try to hide things like that from your kids. It’s true. Especially after they’ve already told you that they’re being tormented every night. And it’s like one thing to be strangled by a ghost. It’s another to be strangled by a Nazi. It’s a whole third thing about being strangled by a ghost Nazi who stares at you.

Every night as a teenage girl, it’s creepy. Our Lord Kanarvon Curse-O-Meter is nice and calibrated here for the main topic. But before we go into that, we’re going to head on over to the probably cursed gift shop and museum for today’s artifact.

Today’s addition to the probably cursed museum and gift shop is the clay wizard. It is maybe seven to eight inches tall, gray and brown all over. And it’s very textured. He has what appears to be a pebble hanging around his neck by a string that fits in a little pot he’s holding. His face has an empty soulless expression with empty black eyes and his mouth hanging a cape.

He appears to be wearing a gnarled cloak and a crooked wizard hat. Now as for its backstory, before probably cursed was a podcast, I was using the title as a project to sell upcycled art. My idea was to take those old grandma figurines and then paint them to look scary or like horror movies and then sell them online. And some of them are still available on the Etsy store online.

And most of them are in people’s baskets right now. Are they? Yeah. Crazy. Like more than half.

It’s good to know. You guys just gotta pull the trigger. Just gotta buy them. What are you gonna do with your money? Just buy dumb old groceries and electricity? I mean support some local artists. If you’re local. Local to earth?

Support your earth artists. This clay wizard, I never got around to painting it because it already looks so unsettling. So ominous.

There wasn’t really too much I could add or change to make it even creepier. And in a way, it’s the first item ever to get purchased for the probably cursed museum. If you’d like to know more, you can head on right on to our Etsy store at probablycursed.com. And if you love him, you can purchase him there.

Every item sold goes towards growing the podcast and one day opening a physical location for a probably cursed museum. It’s also time for another house hunting update. Our last fun experience involves strange noises. So about a week ago, Chris and I let Freddie, you don’t know who Freddie is, it’s our dog, outside and then sat down to eat dinner. And we suddenly heard a loud crash outside. At the time we were doing renovations and Chris had removed some boards from our deck. And the crash to me sounded like Freddie had fallen through the hole in the deck.

It just like this loud clang, it sounded like jingling of dog tags. And so I jumped up and ran to the back door thinking that I’m gonna have to like save the dog. And then he’s chilling on the deck and gave me a confused look because he’s like, why are you so panicked? I am surprised he has not fallen into lying on the deck.

I’m also surprised he has not fallen into the hole in the deck. Either way, Chris and I did a quick search of the house but didn’t really find anything at the time. But then the next day Chris went downstairs to find a Halloween decoration we have, which is a skeleton dog had fallen off our desk in the basement. Chris had to move it so we could get access to our windows. And he’s like, I swear I put it far enough on the desk that it shouldn’t fall.

Something shove the dog over. I’ll have the desk. Fast forward to this week and I was working from home. Chris took the dog to work and it was about two o’clock when I heard a sound like a cupboard door slamming shut in the kitchen. I got up and walked to the kitchen to find that there were three cupboards open.

Now there is the possibility that I did open them myself and I’ll be honest, I can’t remember. Because I haven’t really been paying attention to random things like that in the house. None of the stuff that’s been happening has been kitchen related before.

So because of that, I’m going to start paying attention a little bit more going forward. Alternatively, maybe you’d like to help us buy a camera to put in our kitchen in the hopes of catching another cupboard door slamming. If you buy some stuff from the probably cursed Etsy shop, maybe we will do that and you can eventually see footage of our cupboards opening and closing. That wraps up the museum portion of our episode. Now we’re going to move on to the main topic. For this week’s story, I’m headed back to Canada to discuss the Valley of the Headless Men.

Our home in native land. Google Maps refers to it as Deadman Valley. So if you Google it, the name doesn’t look the same, but they are the same Valley.

I checked. Did they just go under a rebrand to make it sound more friendly? I don’t know. I also think that most people aren’t going out there.

You’ll find out why, but there aren’t many people going out there. I might just be splitting hairs saying that a Headless Man Valley sounds way more unfriendly than Deadman Valley. Honestly, the Valley of the Headless Men definitely sounds way more unfriendly. So this valley is located in the Northwest Territories in Nahani National Park Reserve. The valley is rumored to be haunted by dead explorers and prospectors who’ve gone missing or have been found decapitated along the banks of the Nahani River. The area can only be reached by air, water, or a really long walk into the park. For those of you who want to do the ghost hunting thing, keep in mind you’re likely going to end up another victim of the Valley of the Headless Men.

The area is dangerous and mysterious. There are no roads at the park, and the National Park is 3 million hectares in size, which is bigger than Belgium. Crazy. So I guess whoever planned out the National Parks for the country probably never went there in person. He just drew it out on a map. So from what I can tell on Parks Canada website, it was determined through talks with the local Indigenous people, and they keep increasing the size. And I suspect that’s because of the… there’s some rumors of like weird climatic winds and stuff like the Chinook winds coming through and making the valley almost a very unique ecosystem. So they just keep expanding and spanning the area. Originally when it was first set out, it was not that large.

So it’s just 3 million hectares now. Okay. So every time they review it, they’re like, well, we now got to protect this because this is also real interesting.

Yeah. So let’s just make it bigger. No one wants to live out there.

Let’s be honest. For anyone who’s ever been to the North Forest Territories, when you get… Or, northern Canada, anywhere, really quite frankly. When you get a little further north where conditions are slightly less desirable, the communities are smaller and they’re further apart. To give you an idea, 97% of Canada’s population is all along the American border.

Yes. So we don’t live in the frozen, frozen Arctic, most of us. It’s not because we’re getting ready to invade. No. So, Nahanni… Emoji face, smiley emoji. Do you want to do that again? No, it’s fine.

It was done. Honey National Park Reserve was established in 1976. Just to give you a better idea for Canadian listeners, how big this is, it’s .3% of our country is the size of this national park. So it’s huge. Another way to look at it is like it’s more than half the size of Nova Scotia. Oh, okay. Or if you looked at like, what did you say, a .3%? Yeah.

If you apply it to the human body, it’s probably like, that’s your ear. Yes. This place is kind of what I feel like national parks should be because of the low population densities and difficulty accessing the site. And with the support of Indigenous communities in the area, Parks Canada is actually able to focus on the park’s ecological integrity instead of tourism. So there is nothing, no campsites, no tourist things, zero. You are in the middle of nowhere.

None of those dumpsters that are bear proof. No, no Wi-Fi. No one on, which probably also means no cell phones. So you’re isolated out there.

You’re going up there on one charge. So, Nahanni National Park is the traditional land of the Dene people. And there’s archaeological evidence showing that the park was occupied as early as 10,000 years ago, but it’s possibly earlier. That’s just the earliest date we’ve been able to find. The area has been used by Indigenous people for hunting and traditional uses since that time.

And according to Parks Canada’s website, it is still being used by Indigenous people for hunting, which makes it a little different than other national parks we have in the country because most national parks are not allowed to hunt in. That’s true. Yeah.

But no one else is going up here. So this land wasn’t only used by the Dene people. Dene oral histories have noted that the area was also once home to the Naha people. They were people that were known to viciously attack and raid Dene settlements. And the Dene are a peaceful people, but they were kind of pushed to their limits. So they decided it was time to fight back. So they sent skits out to look for the Naha settlement.

And they found the settlement near Prairie Creek. At this point, the Scouts returned home and they gathered together the Dene warriors and waited for nightfall, hoping to catch the Naha off guard. And then as darkness swept across the area, the Dene slowly snuck into the Naha camp, moving closer and closer to the TPs. And once the Dene warriors were alongside of the TPs, they quickly threw open the tent flaps with weapons at the ready, only to find the TPs were all empty.

Was it a double cross? Well, the Naha TPs were set up for sleeping. There were smoldering fires in all the TPs, but the camp was empty. This is the first reported case of people going missing in Nahanni National Park. To give you an idea of how this story applies, the Naha camp would have been located directly across the river from the Valley of the Headless Men. So all the Naha’s were just gone. Yeah.

Now, there are some theories that in fact, the Navajo in the States are actually descendants of the Naha people because there are linguistic similarities between the Dene and the Navajo languages. This is some survived. Yeah.

So some survived, we’re not sure, 100% sure. We just have noticed that there’s some similarities between the languages. And so that’s kind of the theory. But that does still seem very bizarre for them to just get up and leave in the middle of the night and not leave all their stuff behind, leave a fire burning. Yeah.

That’s dangerous. So after the arrival of settlers in Canada, the next stories of people going missing in the Nahanni River Valley started to appear. The first of these stories is not widely reported. As many Canadians well know from our history of prospecting in this country, people go missing searching for gold all the time. Usually right after they find the gold.

Yes, correct. And it’s probably just a hazard of the job. I would assume that as soon as you start prospecting, you just tell your family that, nah, I’m good. If you jump up and down screaming, yahoo, gold, gold, I found gold, your chances of dying suddenly go up. In 1898, a group of six prospectors went to the Nahanni Valley to search for gold. We don’t know the names of these people, and I only found this information on one website.

Anyway, not one of the six prospectors was ever heard from again. Several years later, a hunter who was in the area reported to authorities that he had stumbled across a camp in the Nahani Valley and discovered the skeletal remains of a group of miners. The skeletons were all found holding their guns, and every single one of them was missing their head.

The RCMP went to investigate and decided that the men likely died of exposure. You know these boys that get out there, a few snowflakes fall and they just lose their heads. It happens every year. That’s time of year.

Case closed. They decided that the missing heads were likely due to wildlife disturbance at the site. And I do know that animals do love soft tissues like eyeballs, so maybe it’s possible.

But also keep in mind, the two stories that I just told you are the first two disappearances, so hold on for an adventure. I feel like the head would be the least desirable part, because it’s like all the chewy stuff in the middle, and it’s wrapped up in this hard case. First thing birds go for is usually the eyes. Maybe it was a thunderbird. Maybe that one from Illinois.

That’s right. So the next recorded disappearance involves the McLeod Brothers. In 1904, Brothers Frank and Willie McLeod were in Edmonton, and they heard reports of gold near the Nahanni River. Now as Edmontonians ourselves, Chris and I know that the gold rush was a big thing in Edmonton. We also know that it is a long trip from Edmonton to the Northwest Territories. Even with a car, it’s about a 21-hour drive from Edmonton to Nahanni. Yeah, we’re kind of like the last settlement, major settlement, where you can get your supplies. Yeah, we were kind of known as the gateway to the north for the longest time.

But the brothers set out with their primitive gear using trains, boats, and walking, often in freezing temperatures, because Canada is cold. You just got to think about that gold, baby. Yeah. Keeps your feet warm. Surprisingly enough, they were trying to reach Gold Creek. That’s where the gold is. That’s right. That’s where the gold is.

In the name. Why go anywhere else? The men found gold, lots of gold, and they decided to leave the area with the intent of returning the next year with more men and more supplies. However, on their way out of the Nahanni River Valley, their boat capsized, breaking apart in the rapids of the river. They lost most of their supplies and all of their gold. And they went back to Edmonton and de-handed. Well, shoot.

Yeah. And gold’s heavy too, so it’s going straight to the bottom. Yeah, they’re never getting it back. Their bad luck was not enough to deter the brothers from coming back, because in 1905, they made their second trip back to the Nahanni River area. During the second expedition was when the men went missing.

No one had heard from Willie or Frank for about three years. So in 1908, a search party was organized by their other brother, Charlie. After a few weeks of searching, they were able to find the men’s camp. They found tents and old fire, and they also found both men’s skeletons. Both heads there. Nope. Both skeletons had been decapitated.

Oh snap. And one of the skeletons had its arms outstretched and appeared to be reaching for a gun that was propped against a tree. The other skeleton was tangled in a mess of blankets, causing some people to think that the men had been awoken from asleep before they met their fate. They were surprised. Yeah, they were surprised.

The clothing of the one brother who had the outstretched arms was charred or burned like he had fallen on a fire. In addition, there was supposed to be a third man that had gone out with them named Robert Weir. But the body of Robert was not located, and it appeared there were no signs that Robert had ever been at the campsite. Several months later, a little down the river, another skeleton was found, and this was kind of assumed to be Robert Weir because… Who else would it be? Yeah, who else would it be?

But there’s no way of actually proving it is him. Another thing that was interesting that was found at the McLeod Brothers campsite was a carving on a nearby tree that read, We have found a fine prospect, suggesting that the brothers must have found another substantial source of gold. But there was no gold found at their camp, and they were missing some of their prospecting equipment. Just wasn’t there. The RCMP, get ready, were also investigating the disappearance and ruled the cause of death a starvation. Because you know, it’s hard to eat anything when you’re missing your head.

That is true. By the end of this year, you’re just going to be like, what are the RCMP doing? It’s a conspiracy.

They’re just looking out the window when someone’s telling them a crime, and that’s like a little bit windy, and they’re like, They just starved. Yeah. We don’t need to go out there. It’s fine.

Let’s just keep playing cards. As like many prospector stories from back at this time, even with rumors of dead men, the idea of gold was too enticing. And two years later, a Swiss engineer from the Yukon named Martin Gorgensen also ventured into the valley of the headless men.

At this point, Nahanni was kind of nicknamed the El Dorado of Canada, which made the valley a little bit too tempting for gold prospectors. Yeah, once you give it that name. Yeah, that’s kind of just the end. That’s where everyone’s going to show up.

I heard this was the city of gold. I brought bags. Martin had found a location about 70 miles upstream of the newly named valley of the headless men, and he built himself a cabin with the intent of spending the winter in the valley and then meeting up with his business partners the following summer. So he spent some time wandering the valley searching for gold and almost immediately sent word to his partners, telling them he was rich. He found so much gold in fact that it made his business partners super eager to meet him in the summer, and they started making preparations for the trip to the Nahanni Valley immediately, telling Martin they’d wait for him to return so he could lead them back to the location where he had found his wealth.

However, summer arrived and Martin never showed up. Knowing how hard it can be to traverse the area, they waited a bit longer for him to return before they decided he’d just send a search party out to look for him. So the partners hired a guide and they made their way into the valley and they eventually discovered his cabin, or at least the remains of his cabin.

The cabin had been burned and next to the cabin was the remains of another headless corpse. Again, the RCMP did an investigation, although at this point are we really, do we really trust their findings? Do we count on them? Yeah, they refused to connect the death of Martin to the death of the McLeod brothers, even though all three men were missing their heads. And searching for gold in the same area?

Yeah, and once again the missing head was blamed on wildlife. There are no signs of Martin’s gold anywhere to be found. So in 1926, a woman named Annie LaFaute went missing in the Honey Valley while out hunting near the Flat River. Many months after she went missing, a local Indigenous man reported seeing a naked woman climbing a hill and acting erratically, suggesting that maybe Annie had lost her mind.

She was never seen after that. Yet another man was discovered in the valley in 1927. This man was named Yukon, which is in quotation, so a nickname, Fischer. And he was an outlaw, a prospector, and he was also wanted by the RCMP. The RCMP had been searching for him for many years until his skeletal remains were found on the banks of Bennett Creek. Ironically, very close to where the McLeod brothers were found. Yukon’s death was never fully explained, but are we surprised?

A few years later, in 1931, another body was found. This time, the man’s name was Phil Powers. Phil Powers, who did not have the power to live.

Kind of sounds like a Marvel villain. His cabin was also burnt down, which the RCMP stated was likely due to a faulty stovepipe. Most people believe that Mr. Powers was likely murdered, but we can’t be sure. This time, he was not found headless, although there were reports suggesting that his body was actually never found. So maybe someone will find a headless body sometime in the future, and we can connect it back to him. Check his wallet.

That’s right. Agnes Hall went missing in 1928 after venturing too far ahead of her prospecting party. And additionally, another pair of prospectors went missing again in 1936.

Joe Mulholland and Bill Epye. There was no trace of them for several years, except for another burnt down cabin. Any corpses? Headless corpses? Nope, no headless corpses, although don’t worry.

There’s one more. Deaths still continue to happen in the Nahanni River Valley. The most recent deaths that I could find occurred in 1945. One involved a minor from Ontario. We don’t know the name of this minor, but we do know he was found dead in his sleeping bag.

Also headless. The other was a man named John O’Brien who was found frozen sitting next to his campfire, still holding a match in his hand. Yeah, never got to light his fire.

He just died. Did he keep his head? Yeah, he kept his head. He was still there. Over the years, many people have gone missing in the valley.

Accounts range from like 13 up to 44 people have gone missing, but it’s probably more because things go undocumented all the time. I feel like there should be national park signs. It’s like, do not enter valley you may become decapitated and a skeleton. Yeah, you’ll never come back.

The end. It also doesn’t take into account the people who went looking for gold, but didn’t tell anyone because they didn’t want anyone to know. The local Dene People have reported sightings of like massive grizzly bears. Huge and have stories of evil spirits living in the valley. Due to the remoteness of the area, there have been people who suggested that prehistoric creatures may be present in the Henney National Park such as mastodons or amphi- amphi-cylonididae, which are like prehistoric bear dogs.

You have to apologize. My scientific names of animals are not okay. Amphi-cylonididae. I want to look at that. Sure. Oh yeah, it is kind of like a bear dog.

A chubby half bear half dog. Yeah, like if you think about it, it’s so remote that there’s nothing stopping a prehistoric creature from staying there. No one will notice.

No one will notice. Maybe that’s part of the natural park preserve. It’s the amphi-cyonididae preserve. There are some people who believe that Nahanni National Park could hold the entrance to hollow earth because the valley contains over 250 subterranean caverns. So it’s the dinosaurs coming out of the hollow earth. That’s right. Dragging or just biting the heads off of people. Maybe that’s the best part of a person. Or like maybe fire breathing dragon.

A lot of people were burnt or cabins were burnt down. Who knows? Whatever is going on is definitely still a mystery. And the Canadian wilderness is a bit unforgiving at times, especially our winters. They get extremely cold in the Northwest Territories.

But not so cold your head just falls off. No, no. I mean, maybe I have to think about that. I think if you freeze solid, someone still has to like hook an ice ball at your head. This is true. And it’ll explode in a million pieces.

Yes. Due to the remoteness of the area, it is very likely that if anyone goes out venturing to the mark, they will likely go missing. So keep this in mind if you want to try and investigate it yourself.

Would not recommend. Welcome to the Valley of Headless Men. It was nice knowing you. It could just be me, but it feels like a bit of a risk. And that’s the story of the Valley of the Headless Men. So the main theories about what’s happening to all these people is just some sort of enormous wildlife attacking them? They’re not sure. And I think this is one problem that we sometimes have is that when there’s no explanation, we just kind of give it the simplest explanation and then we shrug and we go about their lives. It’s like the RCMP was doing. And in cases like this where it’s such a remote area and very few people live out there, I think it’s important to pay attention to the people that do live out there.

Maybe listen to their stories a little bit more closely. Yeah, there’s evil spirits over there. An enormous grizzlies.

Yeah. Like I did a little bit of, again, biologists in me, I did a little bit of googling to see like where’s the polar bears live? Could it be a pizzly? Like the mix between a polar bear and a grizzly? But the polar bear range in Canada is just so limited and it might have not been as limited in the time. I don’t know what the traditional areas for, you know, polar bears were, but it doesn’t seem like the ideal habitat for them. And so it’s very unlikely that it could have been like a polar bear or a pizzly.

I think pizzlys are something that’s more recent introduction because of climate change. Yeah, I think we have to lean on your dragon prognosis. Yeah. Things were burnt. Yep. People find a lot of gold and then mysteriously die. Yes.

Dragons hoard gold. Yes. Case closed.

Yeah, case closed. It’s a dragon. And the National Park is actually a dragon preserve, but the National Park officials just say that part quiet.

Yeah, I mean, they just, they’re trying to scare people from going there. All right. Well, that’s a really cool story. I like that one. I’d never even heard of that before and that’s quite a spectacular story.

Yeah. You’d hear it more people talking about it. And it was crazy because a lot of people had the story of the McLeod brothers and the rest of these I just had to find in other like locations.

Like most people didn’t know the other stories. And so there is actually a book called The Valley of the Headless Men, which I want to find the audiobook for to see if I can listen to it. It’ll be good road trip material. Yeah, it’d be good road trip material because it would be pretty interesting. But well, I like that. We’ll feed the Valley of the Headless Men into our Curse-O-Meter to tell us the results for the whole Valley itself entering it now. Please stand by.

And it looks like the results are definitely cursed. People show up. They lose their head. It doesn’t sound like anyone came home with gold.

No, no. And it’s funny because how did it get that nickname if nobody ever came back with gold? Yeah. Like it never left the Valley, it sounds like. Like people found it and then they told other people and when they’re getting ready to take it away, it sounds like that’s when they die. Yeah.

Even like with the two brothers where they were trying to get away with like just a little bit in their boat and then their boat capsized and broken to tiny pieces in the rapids. Bye bye gold. Like they’ve got nothing to show for it. Yeah. None of that NWT gold has made it out.

Nope. Which makes you wonder how much of it is still there. It sounds like all of it is still there.

Maybe it’s not worth your time to go get it either. Yeah. I mean maybe. Depends how the world’s going.

Might risk it. I’m surprised nobody went up there during the pandemic when you weren’t allowed to do anything else. There are people that have been up there whether you want this in the show or not, doesn’t matter, but there are people that have gone up there more recently. Not prospecting for gold, but just like sightseeing and whatnot.

And the images are spectacular. So maybe the trick is that you just don’t go searching for gold. You just go there to enjoy the natural beauty and you’re fine. But the minute you start trying to take gold, that’s it. Maybe it’s similar to you know those Pompeii stories where people who take rocks home and they’re like suddenly haunted.

Maybe that area has the same quality. Yeah. Only it’s as soon as you pick it up and make plans to carry a whole bunch home. What if that woman who went missing from her like hunting party accidentally like found a piece on the ground? She’s like, I’ll take that home with me and then that was it.

She was gone. That’s a crazy story. And I like it. Thanks for that Sheryl. You’re welcome. That wraps up today’s episode of the Probably Curse podcast. Be sure to listen to us on the first of next month for our next episode. If you have any ideas for future episodes, you can email us at probablycursepodcast.gmail .com.

Our website is probablycursed.wordpress.com. And if you are looking for a spooky addition to your own home, consider checking out our Probably Curse Museum and Gift Shop at probablycursed.etsy.com for our Probably Curse artifacts. And if you’re one of those people who have the items just sitting in their Etsy basket and are refusing to buy them, buy it now. Yep. Or someone else is going to snipe it out from under you. Yeah snipe. That’s the correct term. Yeah. That was the eBay term.

We’ll be back in the day. Yes, it is. Until next episode, this is Chris. And this is Sheryl.