For this one, we head to the Northwest Territories; Nahinni National Park, an insanely beautiful but scary piece of Canadian geography.

Nahinni is very remote and not a typical tourist destination. You can’t drive in – you need a bush plane or be adept at insane white water rafting and portage.

The area has a rather bad reputation with aboriginal Canadians; an evil place, filled with demons and horrific carnivores. The mountainous areas of Nahinni was the home of the Naha tribe – also a subject of horror and mystery. The Naha were aggressive and violent, frequently attacking the lower-land Dene villages, taking with them, after the attack, the heads of their victims.

Then the Naha disappeared, without a trace. Nothing. Simply disappeared.

Long after the disappearance of the Naha people; the gold rush began. Due to the remote location and some fascinating geographic anomalies (areas that never freeze due to hot springs), rumours began of huge gold veins. Few miners, regardless of “gold fever” were brave enough to venture to the area but enough had caught the gold fever to find their way to the valley now known as 200 Mile Gorge. It was through these people that the horrific legends from the area began to spread.

Enter the McLeod brothers, soon to play a pivotal role in the Gorge’s dark reputation.

In 1908, Willie and Frank McLeod made their way to an area, now known as 200 Mile Gorge; with the belongings packed, they headed into the interior and were never heard from again. Nobody really sounded an alarm; the Gorge was the deep northern wilderness after all, replete with bogs, sinkholes, bears, wolves, a territory whose dangers were totally uncharted.

A year after the brothers disappeared, their bodies were recovered, next to a river. They had both been decapitated and their heads were missing.

This could have been written off as the work of robbers, after whatever gold the brothers had found. It could have, except about 9 years later, another miner died. Martin Jorgenson. He had built himself a small cabin. He died in that cabin when it burned down; his remains were recovered. Most of his remains, there was no skull.

Several decades later, another miner was found in his sleeping bag, also minus his head.

These are the bodies that were recovered. It is estimated that 44 people have simply vanished in the valley.

The native Canadians of the region believe the valley is cursed, some believe that the disappearances and gruesome decapitations are the work of the ghosts of the Naha tribe.

The area remains as a largely untouched part of the country; the difficulty in reaching the area and perhaps the legends manage to keep Nahanni mysterious and not a little scary.