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Episode 16: Alaskan Ghosts
In May of 1973, the chief mate and two sailors on the Alaska State ferry Malaspina saw a sight about which they are undoubtedly still telling their grandchildren. On a clear Sunday morning near Twin Island in the Revillagigedo Channel north of Ketchikan, a huge vessel suddenly appeared dead ahead. Lying broadside to the path of the ferry, it was about eight miles away and was an “exact, natural, and real” ship.
The three men, in two different locations on the ferry, reported the same sighting. With binoculars, they scanned the strange vessel and saw sailors working on deck. The ferry crew watched the strange ship for ten minutes, and then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, it vanished into thin air.
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Meet your host for Episode 16: Alaskan Ghosts
Steve Levi is a 70-something writer in Alaska. He specializes in the impossible crime and the Alaska Gold Rush. An impossible crime is one in which the detective must figure out HOW the crime was committed before he can go after the perpetrators. As an example, in THE MATTER OF THE VANISHING GREYHOUND, the detective must figure out how a Greyhound bus with four bank robbers, a dozen hostages, and $10 million can vanish off the Golden Gate Bridge. Steve’s books can be seen at www.authormasterminds.com/steve-levi and www.steverlevibooks.com. He also does two historical uploads a week. Send Steve your email, and he will include it in the mailings.
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The historical key to understanding the Alaska Railroad is that it started as a Socialist dream. It was a profit-making instrument owned by the government. By the time the railroad finished, the dream of socialism as a governmental form had died. The Russian Revolution showed how flawed socialism by a national government was, the hard-core socialist, anarchist, and syndicalist radicals had been deported on the BUFORD, and the end of World War I flooded American stores with consumer goods. The Roaring Twenties had started, and everyone was making money, and there was no longer a need to have a ‘socialist’ government.
This is a mystery that spanned forty years before being solved and put to rest. Investigators from numerous countries, including the United States, West Germany, Israel, Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, all of which made confused and futile searches for the man or hard evidence of his having
died. His name was Josef Rudolf Mengele.
procrastinating and do something they don’t want to do. Originally the phrase referred to wounded soldiers literally biting down on a bullet to avoid screaming during a wartime operation. Thus, from the past a phrase we still use today though it literally does not apply.
After the body of Edward Morrison was found in the bottom of the U.S. lighthouse boat on the shore of Lake Superior, stories began to flourish about what had happened and who was responsible — even before the facts were established. To this day, people still have strong opinions about an event that occurred more than one hundred years ago.
Perhaps the most famous Alaska Ghost ship story is that of the Eliza Anderson. Here is the saga of a ship in distress, forced to choose between being battered to splinters by the savage sea or running around on the rocky shoals of Kodiak Island. Instead, a tall, gaunt, wind-swept, rain-soaked giant of a stranger seized control of the ship’s wheel and steered her safety. Then, his job completed, he vanished as mysteriously as he had arrived. For fifty years, the legendary “Stranger Who Came Aboard” was grist for the supernatural mill of Alaska Gold Rush stories.
Most parents can imagine no nightmare worse than the disappearance of a child, but how can a parent possibly cope when both of their children vanish, swallowed by the Alaska wilderness?
