As most of us already know there are legends of “Little People”
or “Fae Folk” throughout every culture the whole world over.
They go by so many different names that it’s impossible to keep track of them
all and we’ve discussed before their possible connections to the missing in
the woods that’s become a phenomenon in and of itself in the forests and dense
woodlands of our world including our National Parks here in North America.
It’s the encounters that we all come across here and there and the tales of sightings all
over the place that are mainly what allow us, mostly in this community,
to understand that these are not mere legends or fairy tales but real creatures/beings that
are caught off guard or who choose to show themselves, for whatever reason.
Should this make us scared or simply more prepared when
we head off into any wooded, mostly unseen place?
That, of course, and as always is up to you to decide.
It isn’t only in the forests and aforementioned woodlands around the world where these little
beings are encountered though and it doesn’t seem to matter all that much considering time and time
again the tales told of interacting with or simply laying eyes on one are the same across the board
or, at least, extremely similar and depending upon which ones are seen, possibly even deadly.
Let’s travel to Alaska where tribes such as the Yup’ik and Inuit have long been
keeping up the tradition of the oral word of the legends of the Fae Folk.
The locals though who aren’t members of those two or any tribe also, for the most part,
believe they are just as real as they themselves are.
Are they simply too sheltered or superstitious to be reasonable?
Let’s have a look at some encounters with the wee folk and see whether or
not we can believe they roam as freely as it’s said they do in The Last Frontier.
The Fae Folk in Alaska are called and known by many names but mainly they are
referred to as the Inukin or Enukin, collectively.
That is what we will refer to them here as well, for the purposes of this video.
They are typically described as being between
1 and 3 feet in height and have elf-like, pointed ears.
They are known to dress in the skins of slain animals
and have pointy little heads with hats to match.
The Inukin like to stay hidden underground during the day or roam freely deep within
the vast expanse of mountains but at night are said to roam around
just as freely, and mainly without any inhibition or fear of being spotted.
They love to terrorize and torment people and are said to be ornery or downright nasty.
They intentionally throw rocks at travelers in attempts to confuse or
harm them and will go out of their way to ensure they get lost and roam off trail.
The more mischievous ones steal hunter’s kills,
with caribou being their favorite. The Inukin themselves are avid hunters and
use bows and arrows as their main means of taking down their prey- human, animal or otherwise.
Going back to our theory of the Fae being sometimes responsible
for the missing in the woods, these types are no different.
In fact, they are known to be responsible for abducting women and children; luring them away,
or flat-out snatching them up, never to be seen or heard from ever again.
The natives to Alaska will attest to these
Fae Folk having superhuman strength but that’s nothing compared to the plethora
of supernatural abilities they are also said to be able to use to their benefit.
To name just a few of these alleged abilities there is being able to confuse the mind of any
human or animal they choose, shapeshifting into the same, and making themselves invisible at will.
One man from the Inupiaq tribe described these little people thus,
“They live in the old ways to this very day they dress in caribou skins.
They still hunt with bow & arrow.
They live underground, and in caves all throughout this vast area.
They possess superhuman qualities that you will never believe.
They are incredibly strong and they can run very fast;
they sneak around the villages stealing food.
When any hunter shoots and kills a caribou,
it requires two adult Inupiaq men to lift that caribou to place on a sled.
It only takes ONE Ingnakalaurak or Enukin to pick one up and RUN WITH IT, over his head.
Hunters, experienced hunters, often talk about caribou that they have shot & killed
dead and the caribou will disappear before they reach it to dress it out.
Make no mistake, these people are very good in what they do,
they are perhaps the best hunters in the world.”
This same man claims, and many who know better would agree,
that this is the reason why there are bush pilots who constantly report the
extremely odd sight of seemingly dead caribou running around below them but on their sides!
Once they fly a bit lower to see what’s really going on,
that’s when they notice that the caribou are actually being carried by the Inukin.
Despite all of the aforementioned terrible qualities these little ones possess, they are also
said to have a kind side as well, if you catch them in the right mood or at the right moment.
Every once in a while a report will come in of some lost hiker
or camper who was guided out of the woods by a benevolent little person.
These Inukin seem to be very similar in not only their looks but also their ways
and even their described mannerisms as other reports that come in from all over the world.
Again though, if it’s all just legends and lore and there’s nothing more to
it- then how did so many cultures and experiencers get it right having no
knowledge of one another or possibly even other legends besides their own?
Just something to think about here as we move forward.
Despite what unknowing or unbelieving outsiders think of them, it’s common knowledge to the
natives that these beings are very real and they don’t take kindly to not being believed
or to the Inukin themselves not being believed in as it’s said to bring bad luck among other things.
To listen to and thereby allow outsiders or anyone,
really, to make fun of the Inukin is said to be very unwise indeed.
It’s mainly due to all of the alleged encounters with these little beings that
not only seems to be what cements them into the locals’ everyday reality but also that
pulls them completely outside of the world of books, television shows, and movies everywhere.
It isn’t only the local villagers and hunters who have reported having
run-ins with the Inukin but visitors to Alaska have had more than their
fair share of experiences with them as well; both good and bad.
When hunters have come forward with reports of the animals they've killed
having been stolen before they had a chance to come back with other men to carry it off,
they’ve reported as well that there wasn’t any blood left behind or
really any evidence at all that they had killed anything let alone left it behind.
If the hunters themselves hadn’t known for a fact what they had left behind
and where it would have been like it never happened in the first place.
When they do return with their friends to help carry the animal off and back to the village,
they often report being pelted with large rocks which they believe are meant to make them run
away, thereby leaving behind anything they had originally come looking for.
Much of the time though, the rocks aren’t large enough to do too much damage and
the men would often see tiny little feet running very swiftly through the bottoms
of trees and even hearing something akin to a child’s giggle or children’s laughter.
One hunter, in particular, claimed that while out in the deep woods one day,
with his sled there to help him carry off his kill, he decided to follow some child-sized
shadows that seemed to be the source of some small rocks being thrown at him.
As he followed, ever more deep into the woods,
he said he came upon a giant portal in the side of the mountain.
He stepped forward in order to peer into this alleged portal and when he did he
claims to have seen, right there before his eyes, a large group of
Inukin dancing around to beautiful music that seemed somehow otherworldly to him.
Though initially feeling compelled to follow the creatures and watch them,
he suddenly remembered his sled and kill and turned after only a few moments to go back.
He found his way back without any issues but saw that despite his absence only being for
less than ten minutes total between leaving to follow the “children”,
watching them dance inside of the portal, and walking back, his sled had seemed to age.
The hunter claimed that though the sled was almost brand new when he
brought it into the forest, it was now shredded and in pieces.
The wood had seemed to completely rot in this very short period of time and
it looked as though the weather and the elements had been the cause.
Another strange thing was his kill; the meat of the animal was completely rotten and smelled
rancid, as though he had been gone for much longer than he knew that he had.
Although confused, the hunter was also concerned at what he had just seen by way of the portal in
the side of the mountain and having grown up with the legends of the little ones or Inuken,
decided to leave well enough alone and get back home to his village as quickly as possible.
Once he got back though he realized he had been gone for an entire year and everyone had presumed
he was dead; a victim of the elements or some wild animal out there in the great unknown.
Now, we have seen this time and time again when it comes to human beings stumbling
upon Fae Folk in that they believe mere minutes or even seconds have passed when,
in actuality, they had been gone for months or years and, in extreme cases even decades.
Back to our hunter though, most locals believe his tale and take it as absolute fact.
The legend told is that he had indeed laid eyes on the Inuken and was somehow
enchanted into believing he had only been watching them for a moment or
two while outsiders believe there surely must be some creative coloring that had
been added to the tale in order to make it seem more realistic.
Whether or not it happened though is really up to the individual to decide what they believe.
There are some alleged encounters though that seem to be more likely to have occurred,
at least in the minds of some, mainly due to the fact there are actual eyewitness accounts.
In 1993, The Arctic Sounder, which is a publication of Anchorage Daily News,
published a wide range of accounts of people who came
forward and alleged that they had seen or encountered the Inuken or Fae Folk.
These encounters/reports would later be republished in the Anchorage Daily News itself.
One account came from a local villager named Kenneth Ashby who
lived in a small village near the Noatak River.
Kenneth claimed that in the summer of 1938, he and his brother went out to collect water from the
river when they had a rather menacing encounter with what they believed to be the Inuken.
The brothers trekked through the woods on their way to the river and as they
did they claim they were attacked by a group of wild and feral little people.
These little people were described as being approximately 3 feet in
height and were draped in the skins of caribou.
They also had odd looking haircuts that Kenneth and his brother referred to as “bowl cuts.”
The two brothers admittedly had a hard time defending themselves against this group of
wild and tough little men and only gained the upper hand when the Inuken were distracted by
the arrival of the boy’s grandfather who came in search of them when they
had been gone for too long and the family had started to become worried about them.
This wasn’t the only encounter his family had had that summer with the legendary creatures
of the woods as Kenneth also claims that his sister had had to chase off a group
of them when she caught them trying to steal her catch of salmon at the river.
Kenneth Ashby claimed as well that nine years after he and his brother got jumped
by a group of bowl-cut-haired, caribou-wearing little men,
he had yet another encounter with these interesting and quite scrappy Fae Folk.
He and a group of relatives were camping at the river while on a hunting trip.
While asleep in their camp one night all of the members of the family heard what they believed to
be the Inuken speaking to each other in the soft whispers of some unknown and inhuman language as
well as hearing their footsteps crunching over the leaves below them on the ground.
The Inuken were also seeming to communicate with one another in what was described as
“bird-like whistles” which drew several family members out of their tents in order
to investigate what was going on around them as the rest of the family slept.
They claimed however that whenever they would catch sight of one of the
little creatures they would scamper off and hide, giving Kenneth’s family
the distinct feeling they were involved in a game of involuntary hide and seek.
The family also claims that they followed the sounds and whistles
all the way from their campsite near the river down into the village until a group
of male villagers helped them to chase the Inuken back into the wilderness for
good as the Ashby family went back to their campsite and continued on their hunting trip.
This same series of articles told of a local woman named Flora Penn, who had her encounter in the
same area as the Ashbys, and told her own story with what she thought to be the legendary Inuken.
Flora alleged she was traveling up the river with
some friends when they decided to take a break and pick some berries.
As the friends joked and chatted and picked the delicious-looking fruit,
they noticed something strange on top of a nearby driftwood tree.
When she looked up, Flora said that she noticed a strange-looking,
tiny man with a large and bulbous nose sitting atop a nearby driftwood tree.
This “little man” had pointed ears and a cone-shaped head and a sinister look about him.
Flora reported that she and her friends stopped picking the berries and sat down
to look at this man for what she believed to be an hour or more.
As the friends looked on for what seemed to be an incredibly long time,
the man sat- seemingly unaware of them and smoking his pipe.
Suddenly and all at once it was as though he either came to some sort of realization
or he suddenly remembered something important and quickly got up off of the driftwood tree,
jumped to his feet, and ran off into the woods, seemingly panicking.
Similar stories poured into the paper and another local named Sam Shiedt remembered
his own encounter while he was out one summer hunting caribou.
As he set to work skinning one of his kills, he suddenly heard the soft voice
of someone whispering to him from nearby in the woods in what he said was “the Eskimo language.”
He immediately looked up and saw a little man who
he described as being 3 feet tall and aiming a bow and arrow at him.
Saul had a high-powered rifle on him and said he and the Inuken
spent a few minutes admiring each other’s weapons.
When given the opportunity to touch and try out the bow and arrow he realized
what massive strength it must have taken to pull,
as he couldn’t do it himself with both hands and all his might.
He told the Inuken he could take what he wanted from the caribou and alleged
that all the little man wanted was a fatty part located behind the knee of the animal.
As if these tales weren’t odd enough, another man named Joe Sun claimed to
have been chasing after a prized caribou while out in the wilderness one day but
then noticed there was another hunter who had set his own sights on the same animal.
He told the story in his own words saying,
“I hear from my parents in the Maniilaq area that there was this man hunting.
He had a real rifle.
(Not the old kind that you had to load through the barrel with a rod.)
He saw a caribou he wanted to get close to, to have a shot at it.
He saw another person trying to hunt this caribou too.
When this man, a big man, got close to shoot the caribou it changed into a little man.
The big man jumped at the little man who escaped and began running and climbing up the mountain.”
Our last encounter comes from the May 31 edition of the Anchorage Daily News
and shows the fondness the Inuken have for something we have come to know very well
about the Fae Folk all over the world and that’s for abducting human beings.
A man who called himself Nick Andrew Jr (unsure if that’s his real name) and who was a hunter
from Marshall, Alaska, claims he had been out hunting birds in May while riding his snowmobile.
Nick came across a little boy who seemed to be sitting all
by himself, alone in the middle of a nearby marsh.
Our witness claimed that when he approached the little boy,
he seemed to have been in some sort of trance and barely noticed that Nick was watching him.
There were no tracks anywhere around him which begs the question of how he got out there, into
the middle of the marsh without leaving any prints behind and also, how long he had been there.
Our witness hopped back onto his snowmobile and started asking others in the area
who were also riding snowmobiles and hunting what they knew about the boy,
but that didn’t help because not a single one of them remembered ever seeing such a child.
With the lack of tracks around him and the fact that no one else had noticed him,
Nick started to wonder if the strange boy had simply appeared out of nowhere.
Finally, Nick approached the little boy and asked if he was okay and where his parents were,
saying the boy’s face was red and he had obviously been crying quite heartily.
Upon this questioning, our witness claims the boy immediately started bawling his eyes out
and sputtering that he didn’t know where his parents were and that he was lost and scared.
Nick would say in his own words of the encounter, “The boy was disoriented, dazed, confused and
scared, with no concept of time. He did not appear tired, nor was he hungry or thirsty.”
Nick felt bad and decided to take the young boy back
to his village in order to get some help for him.
After he was calm enough to talk, the little boy had quite an extraordinary story to tell.
He claimed to have been abducted by the Inuken and taken to a mountain nearby; Pilcher Mountain.
It must be said that this mountain in particular is known by the locals for
being a hotbed of activity for the little people and this certainly wouldn’t be the
first encounter or abduction story to come out of the area, and not by a long shot either.
The boy went on to claim that he had seen a girl there who he knew had
been abducted forty years earlier and she was alive and well but under some
sort of spell put on her by the same little people who had snatched him.
He said they let him go, for whatever reason,
and that’s when he suddenly found himself in the marsh; dazed, confused, scared and all alone.
The victim is said to have displayed classic signs of lost time and was
unable to give any further details of either his abduction or captivity.
Unfortunately this is all the information we have on this abduction/encounter and
there’s no way of knowing how it all ended for this scared little boy.
Is there a tribe of fairies hiding out in the Alaskan wilderness who have been given the name
Inuken and who come and go through portals in the sides of the mountains in the area?
From what we have learned throughout the years about
fairies in general it seems as though that’s exactly what’s going on here.
Whatever name you call them, whatever legends you may have heard, even in these
few encounters there seems to be so many common denominators as far as what we already know.
Considering we have come to the information through eyewitness statements, legends and even
fairy tales themselves, it leads some to believe that the Fae do exist and that they are very
protective of their berries, they like to mess with humans by making us lose so much time should
we have the audacity to look upon them without their permission and they also have a predilection
for abducting us- whether or not we make it back home is really up to a host of unknown factors.
As always you are free to make up your own minds as we are merely presenting the
information to you but please, let us know what you all think in the comments below.
So what do you guys think about these strange encounters with the FAE?
Be sure to let us know in the comments down below!
But please keep it friendly and respectful!
And I'll see you guys in our next video