The Alaska Triangle: America's Most Mysterious Missing Zone

What if one of the most mysterious places on Earth wasn’t somewhere across the ocean… but right here in the United States?

In this deep dive episode, we’re heading north to one of the strangest regions in the world: The Alaska Triangle.

Stretching between Anchorage, Juneau, and Utqiagvik, this massive wilderness has become famous for unexplained disappearances, missing aircraft, strange lights in the sky, and stories that go back long before modern investigators ever arrived.

More than 20,000 people have vanished in Alaska since the 1970s, and some of the cases are almost impossible to explain. We’ll look at one of the most famous disappearances in American history ... the mysterious 1972 flight carrying House Majority Leader Hale Boggs, a congressman, an aide, and a pilot… a plane that vanished without leaving behind a single piece of wreckage.

But the mystery doesn’t stop there.

We’ll also explore the eerie legends told by Indigenous communities in the region, including stories of the Kushtaka, a shape-shifting being said to lure travelers deeper into the wilderness. 

Is the Alaska Triangle simply one of the harshest environments on Earth?

Or is there something about this region that we still don’t fully understand?

Song of the Week: "Hey Leonardo (She Likes Me for Me)" by Blessid Union of Souls

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Hey, hi, hello. Every time. Every time I chuckle. Probably because every time I'm really high. Let's see if I can do this right this time. Welcome back to Don't Quote Me as Probably Nothing. The podcast where I talk about weird stuff. I'm Kelly. I almost forgot to say my name. You know what I just had for dinner? I just had chicken and dumplings that I made by myself. Well, I made myself. I always cook by myself. But it was really delicious. And I just had to tell you about it. Because maybe you like chicken and dumplings too, you know? But yeah, I'm Kelly. And today we are heading to one of the strangest places on Earth. And that is a massive region of Alaska where thousands of people have disappeared over the years. Politicians, pilots, hikers, entire planes just gone. And some say it's the wilderness, and some say it's bad weather. And then there's others who were like, okay, well, I think there's something else going on out there in the mountains, okay? So get your snack or whatever it is that you're getting. And let's talk about the Alaska Triangle. Like Bermuda Triangle, but in Alaska. Okay, so I'm so high I'm stuck. My brain does not want to brain at the moment. I think I might need to take a break for a second. So hold on, I'll be back in like five minutes. Can I just tell you guys that vegan brownies make my husband really angry? So I went to Sprouts and I bought these brownies. And I was looking at the recipe on the back and it said that you can make them vegan. So I was like, oh, let me try that. I bet you can't even tell. And you can't even tell. But I did put chocolate chips on top, and I know they're not vegan, you know. And I don't you know what? Are they? Is there milk in chocolate chips? No. No. It's just chocolate, right? Even though I can't hear your answers, I'll agree with you. Anyway, um, I put chocolate chips on top of them, which may have made them not vegan, but they are delicious brownies. They're made with like tapioca or something. Tapioca flour, I should say. And yeah, every time he ate a little piece, he would wake up angry. And I'm like, ew, you don't get any more vegan brownies because I'm not I'm not dealing with this too over a brownie. I don't even know why I I was telling you this. So let's talk about the Alaska Triangle before I forget what I'm talking about. So the Alaska Triangle is this area between come on, man, with these words. You know, I'm sorry to my fellow Alaskan friends that listen in Alaska to this podcast, because I know you're out there. I'm really sorry. But the Alaska Triangle is the area between Anchorage. I know that one. Juneau, maybe, and this one it is I can do this. You can do this, Kelly. It is U Tequic, maybe but I'll spell it for you. So it's U T Q I A G V I K. But anyway, so these three places uh they used to be called Barrow. And if you connect those three places on a map, you get this enormous stretch of land that cuts through mountains, forests, glaciers, rivers, and basically like it's the kind of wilderness where if you drop your phone like it's not your phone anymore. It's the moose's phone. So Alaska itself is already massive. And a lot of people forget this, but Alaska is bigger than Texas, California, and Montana combined. It has more than 663,000 square miles of land, and most of it is barely populated. Think of all of the creepy like Bigfoots that are out there. Maybe that's where the giants are. Anyway, so there's like large portions of Alaska that are so remote that there's no roads leading in or out. And the only way to get there is by a small plane, a snowmobile, or a boat. But here's a creepy thing that I'm about to tell you about Alaska. Since the 1970s, more than 20,000 people have gone missing in Alaska. And Alaska also consistently ranks as one of the highest missing persons rates in the United States. And like if you adjust for like population size, like people disappear in Alaska at about like twice the national average. And Alaska is is like a dangerous place, but like in normal ways, not because people are bad, but because the tri like the terrain is brutal. There's massive mountain ranges, thick forests that can stretch for hundreds of miles, glaciers, and it says crevices, you know. First of all, the way that it's spelled, it says crevasses. Anyway, I'm so sorry for this episode and the weird that's coming out at the moment. I'm just I'm just really really zooted at the moment. It's like in my mind, like I'm talking, but also there's like 50 other me's in my mind talking at the same time. All about different things. Anyway, there's also temperatures that can drop like dangerously fast, and there's sudden storms and wildlife that like will go after you. You ever see the moose out there? I've seen videos on like TikTok and stuff where someone was just like walking and then a moose just started charging them. But anyway, so if someone gets lost in that kind of environment, then survival can become very difficult very quickly. And search teams, they have to deal with fog and freezing weather and terrain that sometimes makes helicopters the only way to reach certain areas. And then, like, sometimes people disappear under circumstances where like the normal explanations of like weather or something don't really add up. Like planes vanish without leaving any debris, experienced outdoorsmen sometimes like disappear. But some cases in the Alaska Triangle are so strange that even investigators have admitted that they're difficult to explain. But that's also why this region slowly gained a reputation as one of the most mysterious places in North America because there's like disappearances and there's strange lights in the sky. On October 16th, 1972, a small twin-engine plane left Anchorage, Alaska, heading towards Juneau, and on board were four people. Hale Boggs, who was the House Majority Leader of the United States, Congressman Nick Bagage, maybe, from Alaska, Russell Brown, who worked as Nick's aide, and the pilot, Don Johns. That reminded me of I don't know, something, I guess. Anyway, so Hale Boggs, at the time, he was one of the most powerful men in Washington, and he had served in Congress for decades and was second in command in the House of Representatives. And Nick Begitch was also a prominent figure in Alaska politics. So the flight that they were on was like just a regular routine flight. It was small aircraft. Small aircraft are extremely common in Alaska because many towns aren't connected by the roads and the people have to fly between cities, you know? And so the plane they boarded was a Cessna 310, and it's a small twin-engine aircraft. And it left Anchorage that afternoon and was expected to land in Juneau later that day, and it never arrived. So the aircraft vanished somewhere over the mountains of Alaska, and there was no distress call, no radio transmission, no indication that anything had even like gone wrong. And once the plane was declared missing, the search effort escalated quickly because of who was on board. And the US government launched what became the largest search and rescue operation in American history at that time. So search teams covered more than 325,000 square miles of wilderness. And this operation included military aircraft, Coast Guard helicopters, civilian planes, ground search crews, and thousands of hours were spent flying over the mountains and forests and glaciers and the coastline. So they actually searched for 39 days, and not one piece of the wreckage was found. So in most aviation accidents, especially over land, investigators usually find something. They're fragments of the aircraft or a scattered debris or something like that. But here there was just no trace of the plane at all. So the official explanation was that the aircraft likely crashed somewhere in the Chugot, Chuggech Mountains. Guys, I I know I said I'm sorry, but I'm I'm sorry. If you're listening to this for a history lesson, close your ears because this is all wrong. I will have you pronouncing things wrong and saying them so confidently, if you were wondering. But anyway, those mountains are an enormous mountain range east of Anchorage. So they're extremely rugged and they have sharp peaks and there's glaciers and weather that can change rapidly. And a small plane hitting that terrain. And a small plane hitting that terrain could easily scatter wreckage across steep slopes that are nearly like impossible to search. But what's wild is that the pilot, Don John's, was considered experienced. Weather conditions along that route were not unusually severe that day, and the flight path was well traveled, and he didn't even radio call anyone if something was happening. So, because of all of this, the case sparked speculation like almost immediately. Some people suggested mechanical failure or like sudden weather shifts, and others pointed out that Hal Boggs had been a member of the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. And he publicly questioned aspects of the investigation and had reportedly expressed concerns about the FBI's handling of the case. So maybe that's why they went missing. I mean, like, there's no evidence supporting that idea, but sounds about right. But like when you deploy that many aircraft and like that many people and like search such a vast area of land and then come back empty-handed, like what even are you doing? But to this very day, in 2026, and what year did I say this was? Was it 72? Anyway, we're in 2026, and 72 was um 44 years ago. Did I math right? Did I do my maths correctly? Wait, I think I'm wrong. I think I'm wrong because so my husband was born in 1982 and he's 43. So sorry for the noise. Someone's driving by with a really loud car. Is it a motorcycle? I have headphones on so I can't hear that well. There's like a back oh, it's windy. We're getting tornadoes tonight, I think. But there's like a back road along the backs of our houses, and sometimes loud cars go up and down them, and you can hear them through our windows. Because I think they use cheap materials when they built this house. Especially because like they're building houses so fast nowadays. You know, when we first moved here, there was a new row of houses on like the main road coming in, and a tornado came and knocked them all over, and if they were not built back up standing two days later. Isn't that wild? Like that these the bones of these people's houses just fell over and they just propped them back up and now they're living in it, you know? It's wild. Why am I talking about this? I got sidetracked and I paused this for a second and then ended up scrolling on my time hop. Which I have a funny story about that. That just came up. So way back when, when I worked at the courthouse in media for the first time I was there twice, but the first time I was in domestic relations, okay. And we answer phone, I like I would answer phones all day about and people have questions about like child support and stuff like that. But anyway, sometimes, so upstairs on the second floor, uh the caseworkers would meet with like I guess we would call them the defendants, but the people who have to like pay the child's the child support. But sometimes, you know, the people who who were requesting child support were there too. But anyway, um sometimes they would come in and they would scream and they would get wild because you know it's it's a wild out there. And so I used to go out to the second floor to get all this paperwork to be scanned to put into like the computer thing to make it digit like digital, digitized, I guess is the word. And I get off the elevator because I don't do steps up, you know. Being large, steps up, huh, are not my thing. I mean, I'm getting better at them now, but I'm just you know, if there's an elevator, I'm taking the elevator. Nobody wants to walk up extra steps because it's not you're going up to the next floor. It's not one flight of steps, it's two. Two flights of steps for every floor is super annoying, okay? Anyway, so I get off the elevator, and there's like 15 to 20 park police, and some of them have guns, and then some have tasers because if they can't pass the little test they have to take for the gun, they have to carry a taser, which is kind of funny. But anyway, um, I could have just made that up, but that's what I heard. So I'm gonna go, I'm gonna roll with that, and I think that's what happens. But anyway, like their guns and tasers were drawn, and they this guy was standing in the corner and was just talking to them. Every single person had a weapon drawn, okay. And this guy who's a police officer watches me walk off the elevator. I said excuse me to three different people. Okay, I was just like, excuse me, excuse me, and I was literally bobbing and weaving in between them. Like at any point, if one of them would have pulled the trigger on their taser, I could have taken a taser to the temple. Like that's what I was walking through. I'm sure. Don't forget. So yeah, and then so I scanned my badge, and like not one person said, Hey, what are you doing? Why don't you turn around and go somewhere else? Or like, hey, you can't be up here. They just like mainly they just like watched in disbelief as I was walking in between them. But anyway, why I'm telling you this is because they had to okay, well, let me finish the story first. So I scan my badge, I go through, and the head lady who is like the director or something, or whatever she was, she ran the whole like building or some shit. And she was like, What are you doing? And I was like, I'm just getting my paperwork to scan. And she's like, You she's like, if you see park police, she's like, you need to turn the other way. And I was like, Oh my bad. Like, didn't think anything of it. So I grab it all nonchalantly and I go back downstairs. But by this point, I'm like shitting my pants. I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna get fired. They're gonna fire me over this. So my boss wasn't there, and it was this other lady, Sandy. So I go into Sandy's office. I'm sorry, Lauren was there, but she wasn't in the office at that time, and I was panicking, so I run into Sandy's office and I'm like, I am in trouble. And she's like, Oh my god, shut the door, what happened? And I and I explained to her what happened, like from beginning to end, and she's like real quiet, and then she just starts busting out laughing for like a solid five minutes. Meanwhile, I'm having a heart attack, and she's like, You're not gonna get in trouble. But then, uh like 20 minutes later, they called a meeting with the entire courthouse, so like the main courthouse and everything attached to it, and then domestic relations had like their own little building and stuff like that. Well, like we were in that building, so like both buildings, main building and small building, all of the supervisors and directors and stuff had to have a meeting, a safety meeting about what to do if uh an employee encounters a situation where park police is involved. But what makes me chuckle is that I remember them telling me when they got back that they were just like chuckling the whole entire time because they knew that it was me. Anyway, I don't even know if you like well laugh at that. Or if you'll think it's funny, but I think it's funny, so I had to share it with you because that's a memory. I think I was gonna talk to you guys about UFOs now. So something that shows up a lot in stories from this region is strange lights in the sky and unexplained aircraft sightings. So if you start digging into reports from pilots and people who live in Alaska, like they have one of the highest UFO sighting rates in the United States. You know, I forget a lot that Alaska is part of the United States. And I should know this because I'm not that dumb, but I do forget. They remind me of Russia. Are weren't they Russia? Were they part of Russia before? I think they might wear the same fuzzy hats, maybe. But anyway, Alaska has huge stretches of extremely dark sky with almost no light pollution, which means that people out there can see things in the sky that people in cities would never notice. Also, I had a telescope one time and I want to buy another telescope. And the reason why I had it one time is because I gave it away because it was in my basement and we were removing, I was gonna bring it with me because we don't really have that much light pollution around here, and the sky would is like amazing to look at just with your eyes. But with a telescope, I want to see everything. But I gave it away because I went to look at the telescope to move it, and I saw a bug on it, and I was not putting my eye to the eye hole because what if the bug went in my eye? So I gave it away for free. But now I need to buy a new one because I want to look at the stars, you know? But that telescope, I looked at the moon one time, and you know how sometimes Pink Floyd's dark side of the moon can feel a little creepy. The dark side of the moon is very creepy because I was looking at it and I was getting scared inside, even though I was just looking at the moon, but like trying to focus on the dark side of the moon, like it literally goes from light to dark, like the other side is dark, like so dark, like there's not a light on in there, you know? And it yeah, it was scary. I was waiting for like something to pop out and scare me. Maybe I was scaring myself, but anyway, pilots have described objects moving extremely fast, making sudden direction changes, or appearing to hover silently before disappearing. And pilots, by the way, are usually the last people who want to report something strange because their careers depend on being up there in the sky, you know? So one mountain that comes up a lot in these stories is Mount Hays, and that sits deep inside the Alaska Triangle. So Mount Hayes is the highest peak in the eastern Alaska range, and for years there have been rumors that something strange happens around that area. And some pilots have reported navigation instruments acting oddly when flying nearby, and others have claimed to see strange lights moving near the mountain, and there are some science-y things, you know, that could like it could be so. Alaska has magnetic variations that can affect compasses, and solar activity can also mess with radio signals and navigation equipment. So I guess like not every strange instrument reading means something mysterious is happening. But it's the aliens, it's the aliens for sure. It's not the compass thing that Alaska has to make it spin. It's not that, it's the aliens. But anyway, Mount Hayes eventually ends up becoming the center of. Of one of the more popular theories connected to the Alaska Triangle. And so the theory claims that an underground alien base exists inside or beneath the mountain. And the reason I think this is because of the number of strange sightings reported in that region. Some say they've seen objects flying into the mountains, and others claim that there's like glowing lights that appear and then vanish suddenly. And then there had even been stories from pilots who said they experienced brief periods where their navigation systems malfunctioned. So now I'm going to tell you the story of Lake Angikuni. And my bad if it's pronounced wrong. So according to the legend, back in 1930, a Canadian trapper named Joe Labelle arrived at a small Inuit village near that lake in northern Canada. And technically this is just outside Alaska, but it's still part of like the Arctic region where all these things come from. So Joe LaBelle had reportedly visited this village before, and it wasn't like an unknown settlement. People lived there. There were families, hunters, children. And when he arrived, he found the entire village completely empty. And then he was immediately like, oh dang, why is it empty? So the story says that when LaBelle walked through the village, everything looked wrong. It wasn't like destroyed or abandoned for a long time. It was just like empty. So food was supposedly still cooking over fires, and rifles were left inside homes, and personal belongings were still in place. And according to some versions of the story, the sled dogs nearby had either starved or been found dead, like still tied up, which would mean like nobody came back to take care of them. And then LaBelle reportedly went to the nearest telegraph station to alert the authorities. And when he did, the investigators and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were looking into everything. And this is where everything starts to get like really strange. So some newspaper articles at the time claimed that dozens of people had vanished overnight without like any sign of a struggle. And other reports said that nearby graves had been opened and that the bodies were missing. And some stories even added that mysterious lights had been seen in the sky the night before the disappearance. And if that don't sound like the beginning of a horror movie, I don't know what does. But anyway, when historians later went back and tried to verify all of the details, they found out that all of like the dramatic elements in the story were never confirmed by official reports. And then the Royal Canadian Mounted Police later stated that there was no evidence of an entire village disappearing overnight. And they were like, oh, everything was just exaggerated by newspapers. Like it is possible that the village had simply been like temporarily abandoned, which was something that Arctic communities sometimes did when hunting conditions would change. Or like if the groups moved during like a different season or something. But like, who leaves their food over the fire? You know. But I actually am a couple days early with recording this. So I am taking a break until tomorrow because it is dark outside and I'm about to talk about a shape shifter and stuff like that. So we're not gonna do that in the dark. We're gonna do it in the daytime. So I will be back in like hold on. Let me count. It's like 7 30 at night now. So in about 20 hours. There could have been a lot easier way for me to do that than count on my fingers. But anyway, I'll see you in 20 hours. I'll B R B. I'm gonna put an away message up. Pretend this is Aim and I have an away message. Um, hold on. What is my away message gonna say? I know what it would be. It would be like let the rain fall down. Hilary Duff. Or I'd be like, there was take me back Sunday lyrics that I pronounced wrong, that I not pronounced, that I said wrong in an old podcast episode, BRB. I always wanted to walk out to like Stone Cold song. So just pretend that was me doing that. But that was because I'm back telling you about what I was gonna tell you yesterday, but then it got dark. So I'm going to tell you about the Kushtaka, is what that's called, I think. So it comes primarily from the stories of the Tslingit people and also appears in traditions from neighboring coastal groups like the Simshian people. So the name Kushtaka roughly translates to land otterman, and the stories surrounding it can be a little unsettling. So the Kushtaka is described as a shapeshifting spirit that can transform into a giant sea otter, a human, and a half human, half-otter creature. And most sightings are said to occur in dense forest, riverbanks, and coastal areas of southeast Alaska, especially around places like Tongas. I'm gonna smell this uh national forest. T-O-N-G-A S. I was doing so well with not laughing at anything. Oh man. But anyway, um in many of the stories the Kushaka uses these forms to lure humans away from safety. And I don't know what I would do if I saw like something coming at me that looked like an otter. I think otters are the cutest things ever. They're just they they have cute little kissable faces. But then if the other half of that otter was a human, I'd be like, ugh. No thanks. But one of the creepiest parts of the legend is how the kushtaka hunts. So according to folklore, it can mimic human voices, and people lost in the woods might hear a baby crying, a woman calling for help, or a friend or a family member shouting their name. And when someone follows the sound, they're led deeper into the wilderness, and that's when the kushtaka appears. And some stories say that it kills the person, and then other versions say that something even stranger happens. So, in certain slingit stories, the kushtaka doesn't just kill people, instead, it transforms them into another kushaka, and then victims become trapped between the human and spirit worlds, forced to live as another Ottoman creature of the forest and rivers. So there's also other versions of the legend that portray the Kushtaka differently. Instead of a monster, it can be like a rescuer. So, stories tell of people lost at sea after storms or shipwrecks. It took me like three tries to say that word. I kept saying shrimp wreck. But anyway, they were dragged ashore by otters, protected from freezing waters, and then saved from drowning. And then when this when the survivors woke up, the otters were gone. And then some elders said those rescuers were Kushaka spirits helping humans. So depending on the story, the Kushtaka is either like a trickster or predator or a guardian spirit. So those legends are deeply tied to like the southeast Alaska, including places like Prince of Wales Islands and the coastal forest of the Alexander Archipelago, whatever that is. But the region is known for dense rainforest, foggy shorelines, isolated rivers, and thick wildlife habitat. Now, some researchers think that Kushtaka legends might have been inspired by sea otters behaving strangely near the shore or echoing voices in dense forests, or people getting lost in the wilderness and hypothermia hallucinations. But something a little creepy is that some of the old stories about this thing say that once a Kushaka has targeted someone, it will follow them for years. And the victim may hear the same voice calling to them again and again near water or forest. So speaking of otters, did you guys hear about the guy who said that he was like talking to the dolphins and they took him to some city or something like that in Florida? So this dude was like walking along the highway in like Fort Myers or something. It was like six in the morning, and he's like barefoot and wet and sunburned, like wild. So, anyways, someone driving by calls the police because he's like just standing there on the side of the road and he's like drawing blueprints in the sand. And the police were like, dude, what are you doing? And this guy starts explaining that three days earlier he was swimming in the ocean when a literal like pot a pod of dolphins started surrounding him, and the dolphins basically forced him to swim deeper out into the Gulf of Mexico, or I think it's called the Gulf of America now. Then uh some somehow they took him about like 40 feet underwater where they're apparently building an underwater city. And then he said that the dolphins needed his help designing it. So, like for three days, according to him, he'd been underwater helping dolphins plan buildings, like condos, a town square, recreation areas, like the whole thing. And then the best part is that he told the police that the dolphins were communicating with him through clicks and whistles, and that after a while he just like started understanding them. But he also did say that there was one dolphin in charge and that he named him Gerald, which what kind of in-charge name is Gerald? I feel like an in-charge name would be like Maximus or something like that. But anyway, so so when the officers asked him like the most obvious question ever, which is like, how did you breathe underwater for three days? This dude was like, Oh, Gerald handled that. And then the police were looking at the sand where he was drawing these blueprints, and they said that like the weirdest part about it is that the plans were actually detailed. Eventually, like they took him in for a medical evaluation, because obviously, but before they did, he told them that the dolphins had released him because the plans were done and that Gerald said they'd be back for phase two. So somewhere out there, according to this guy, there's a dolphin construction project happening right about now. And like I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's also somehow still less ridiculous than half the things that happen in Florida. Also, you know how dolphins are super duper intelligent? What if they're aliens? And they can like really communicate with us, because you know how they say the UFOs come from the ocean? What if it's the dolphins? The dolphins are the aliens and the what am I trying to say? They're the yeah, the dolphins are the aliens and and their spaceships are in the ocean, and then they get in the spaceship and then they come up from the ocean and go outside into the out now, and they go to other galaxies. You know how many galaxies are out there? I learned it at the Franklin Institute when I went for Valentine's Day. But I cannot remember how many there were. But there were a lot. And it's wild to think that we're the only humans in the whole entire universe. Do you guys think we're the only humans in the whole entire universe? Like there has to be other. You know, I have a feeling there are other humans out there on another world, and they're probably a lot smarter than we are. But anyway, thanks for tuning in to this episode. And hopefully it left you with more questions than answers. If you liked it, tell someone about it. And if you didn't, maybe tell someone about it. Shout out to those listening on Nighthawk Radio. If you're listening on Spotify or wherever else you get your podcast, give me give me five stars. I was gonna sing that to you and like to the tune of that song from I think it's Leonard Skinnard, give me two steps, that song. Yeah. I didn't though. But just no, I wanted to. The song of the I feel like I'm missing something. So if I'm missing something, if I remember it, I'll write it down and I'll say it next time. But the song of the week this week is from Blessed Union of Souls, and it's called Hey Leonardo. And I hope you listen to it, and I hope it makes you feel young. Stay weird, stay curious, go be kind to someone for no reason, and go be amazing.

SPEAKER_02 34:51

She don't care about my car. She don't care about my money. And that's real good, cause I don't got a lot to spend. But if I did, it wouldn't mean nothing. She likes me for me.