The mystery of the disappearing Eskimo village of Angikuni Lake

Something unexpected and inexplicable happened in the November of 1930 near the Angikuni Lake, Canada. According to the reports, an Inuit village completely disappeared with its few dozen people. Even the buried vanished from their graves!

No-one knows for sure where the villagers were gone (Photo: Nicolas Perrault II / wikimedia.org)

The strange case was reported to the local authorities by a trapper, called Joe Labelle, who was about to ask for shed for the night from the Inuit people living in the village. Thus he walked into the lakeside village - just to notice that all of the villagers had disappeared.

Joe Labelle then started to realize all the haunting details about the place. Everything was left abandoned and seemingly untouched: the fireplaces, the foods, the beverages, the homes and even the weapons were left behind just where, and as they were. One of his most interesting find was that the clothes were also laying all around the village.

The RCMP could not find any signs of violence when investigating the village, nor did they notice any signs of preparation for the departing of the villagers. What more, only a few dozen meters away from the village they found the remains of two sled dogs. Later they found out that both of them starved to death despite being close to the food storage and abandoned homes of the village, where they could have found plenty of food. The most disturbing perception of all was that the graves were all emptied, even though they were seemingly untouched.

Some of the witnesses also reported unusual events - a trapper called Armand Laurent was near the village by that time, and noticed a strange light phenomenon above the lake. He was not the only one who became aware of the lights - his sons could also recall the zigzagging flashes of light, that also seemed to change its colors before it finally disappeared into the Angikuni Lake. Laurent himself insisted that it was not the Northern Light he saw - he claimed he had seen it many times, and the light above the lake looked very different.

It's no surprise at all that the strange case of the vanished village is a popular topic among those who are thrilled by mysteries and such - and it's no wonder either that many of them came up with a wide variety of theories to explain the events. Some scientists believe that what happened is in fact an extraordinary case of migration - although it's hard to understand why a whole village would suddenly decide to take a journey without bringing with them at least some food, clothes sledges, dogs, canoes or weapons. (Not to mention their buried ancestors, whom they, contrary to the previously mentioned items, seem to had taken with themselves.) Perhaps the alleged zigzagging lights were what motivated them...? We might never know.

Those with a more spiritual or abstract way of perceiving our World find it more likely that whatever happened near the Angikuni Lake, it might be in connection with some kind of alien activity. Their theories also remain unproved, despite the more than 80 years that had passed since the vanishing of the village.

The most widely accepted theory is in fact that the whole story was made up by a journalist called E. Kelleher, who was inspired by a body disappearing from a grave, and the unexplained case of a few missing people.

Anita Diós

May 2018