Haunted National Parks (Vol. 4)

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Podcast Episode Overview

Our Halloween tradition continues! This year, we’re chasing three cryptid legends through the national parks – Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Lake Clark National Park, and Yellowstone National Park. 

Are these tales from the spookiest corners of the park fact or fiction? You’ll have to tune in to find out! 

In this episode, we cover:

• Why old sailors’ maps were covered in dragons, sirens, and sea monsters
• What actually separates a cryptid from an animal that science just hasn’t caught up to yet
• Why the national parks make the perfect hiding place for a cryptid legend
• Why there might be something lurking outside Guadalupe Mountains National Park (and what that something might be)
• What’s lurking in the water on the way to Lake Clark National Park
• Just how deep Lake Clark and neighboring Lake Iliamna really go
• The Native American legend behind Beartooth Highway in Yellowstone National Park

Your task for today: Head over to the @DirtInMyShoes Facebook or Instagram page and tell us which cryptid creeped you out the most!

Planning your own spooky adventure?

• 5 Things You Can’t Miss On Your First Visit to Guadalupe Mountains National Park
• See a full trip planning itinerary for Yellowstone National Park
• Trip Planning Guide for Alaska’s National Parks (Including Lake Clark National Park)
• Master Reservation List 
• National Park Checklist
• Trip Packing List

Haunted National Parks (Vol. 4)

Every year around this time, we sit down and do the same thing: John tells stories, and Ash gets to be scared right along with you as he tells them. 

It’s become one of our favorite traditions here on the podcast, and this year we’re using it to talk about cryptids. These myths (or are they?) are the creatures whose existence is claimed by the people who’ve seen them but hasn’t been confirmed by mainstream science yet, and the national parks might be the best cryptid habitat in the country. 

Grab a flashlight — we’re heading to Texas, Alaska, and Wyoming to see a few haunted national parks!

Why National Parks Are the Perfect Places for Spooky Stories

Before we get to the stories, it helps to know why we’re telling them. Old sailing maps used to fill in the unknown edges of the world with dragons, sirens, and sea serpents.

For a long time, people assumed it was there for decoration. It was not. Many of those monsters were based on real reports from sailors and explorers who had seen something they couldn’t explain.

Every single one of the creatures we now consider fact – the narwhal, the giant squid, the mountain gorilla, the giraffe, the duck-billed platypus, the Komodo dragon – was once dismissed as a tall tale before science eventually caught up.

That’s what makes something a cryptid. Its existence is claimed by the people who report seeing it, but hasn’t been proven or studied by mainstream science. And national parks are a natural home for them. 

Parks are huge, wild, mostly untouched landscapes, while still drawing enough visitors that sightings keep getting reported. There is plenty of land to hide in, and plenty of people to spot something, keeping the legend alive!

The Chupacabra of Guadalupe Mountains National Park

Our first stop is at Guadalupe Mountains National Park, home of the tallest mountains in Texas and the sheer, dramatic cliffs of El Capitan. And out near the Salt Basin Dunes, a hairless, spiny-backed creature with eyes that glow red in the dark is rumored to be roaming around. 

That description lines up with one of the most well-known cryptids in the Southwest: the chupacabra. In Spanish, the name literally translates to “goat sucker.” But its appearance shifts depending on the region. 

In Puerto Rico, where the legend originated, it’s described as more reptilian and bipedal. In Texas, Mexico, and the rest of the Southwest, it’s usually described as above, more like a wild, blood-drinking canine.

Most chupacabra sightings in the Southwest get explained away as coyotes with mange, a skin condition caused by a mite infestation that leaves them mostly hairless and unhealthy-looking. It’s a reasonable explanation, and once you’ve seen a photo of a coyote with a bad case of mange (we’ll spare you the details here though), it’s not hard to see why people jump to it. 

The Lake Clark National Park Monster

Our second stop takes us up north, to Lake Clark National Park & Preserve in Alaska. Here, there is local lore of a lake monster hiding just below the surface. 

People have reported huge dark shapes, vertical tail fins, and silver-gray bodies estimated at 10 to 30 feet long in both Lake Iliamna and Lake Clark, with reports going back to Native American oral history and continuing with modern bush pilots and fishermen. 

The going explanation is usually a large white sturgeon or a sleeper shark that’s made its way in from the ocean. The route from the Bering Sea into Lake Iliamna and up into Lake Clark is short by Alaska standards, and these are genuinely deep bodies of water. According to the National Park Service, Lake Clark reaches a depth of 870 feet, and neighboring Lake Iliamna is said to run even deeper.

Nobody has confirmed a white sturgeon in either lake yet, though. Until they do, it’s still a cryptid.

The Shunka Warakin Near Yellowstone National Park

Our final stop takes us near Yellowstone National Park, along the Beartooth Highway at the Beartooth Basin Summer Ski Area. The Shunka Warakin is a legend that comes from the folklore of the Iowa, a Great Plains tribe. Translated into English, the name means “carries off dogs.” 

It’s a fun one to think about because as bison herds were pushed to near extinction across the Great Plains, it would track that the predators following them would have followed the last major wild herd left (the one that now lives in Yellowstone). 

Most sightings like this get explained away as a wolf, a bear, or a wolf-coyote hybrid, and there were hyena-like predators in North America that are believed to have gone extinct around the Pleistocene. 

Whether something like that is still out there is exactly the kind of question we like keeping open.

So, Do We Believe in Cryptids?

We do, not in a way that ignores science, but in a way that respects it. An absence of evidence isn’t the same thing as evidence of absence, and history has already proven that some “monsters,” — the narwhal, the giant squid, the platypus — turned out to be real animals that science just hadn’t caught up to yet. 

We think the national parks, with all their wild, protected space, are exactly the kind of place where that mystery gets to stick around a little longer. And honestly, it’s fun to keep those mysteries alive!

If you love a good haunted national parks story, this is volume four, so go back and listen to the first three. Happy Halloween, and happy trails.

Links mentioned in this podcast episode:

• Seven species that used to be cryptids
• El Capitan at Guadalupe Mountains National Park
• Salt Basin Dunes at Guadalupe Mountains National Park
• Episode 51: Haunted National Parks (Vol. 1)
• Episode 95: Haunted National Parks (Vol. 2)
• Episode 129: Haunted National Parks (Vol. 3)

While You’re in the Area: 

• 5 Things You Can’t Miss On Your First Visit to Guadalupe Mountains National Park
• See a full trip planning itinerary for Yellowstone National Park
• Trip Planning Guide for Alaska’s National Parks (Including Lake Clark National Park)