The Fort Kent Wendigo

My name is Sean Viala, one of the co-founders of the Western Canadian Sasquatch Research Organization. Years ago I came upon a local legend known as "The Fort Kent Wendigo." I figured that because the Wendigo (Windigo, Wetiko, Witiko, etc.) is considered to be a spirit that it would be suitable for a website of this type.

Here is the story of The Fort Kent Wendigo.

Fort Kent was once a small settlement in northern Alberta, Canada. The population of this settlement never exceeded 150 people, and now it is nothing but a "ghost town".

In the early 1920's, probably 1921 or 1922, a strange creature was said to be haunting the backwoods around the area. The creature was blamed for several disappearances and a whole score of animal deaths.

One night a local rancher was sitting inside of his home after a long day of work. Suddenly he heard the horses in the corral outside starting to act up, soon the animals were stampeding around the corral, as if trying to flee from something. The rancher figured that perhaps a hungry bear or mountain lion had come down from the forest and was attacking his horses, so he retrieved his rifle and proceeded outside to confront whatever the cause of the ruckus was. No sooner had he stepped outside, when a long, terrify wail came from the forest's edge. He let his eyes adjust to the darkness, then looked in the direction of the corral. To his horror, he found that several of his prized horses had been killed by some unknown creature, while the remaining animals were trying their best to get free of the corral. Then he heard the sound again, a long, moaning wail, but this time it was much closer than it had been before. He turned towards the forest and spotted a very large, dark shape with glowing red eyes shambling towards him. He readied his rifle and fired at the unknown creature several times, the creature turned about, and with it's shambling gait, trudged off into the forest as if the bullets had done nothing but annoy it. The whole time emitting the terrible moaning wail that had first tipped the rancher off to the presence of the creature. The next morning he proceeded outside to remove the dead horses from the corral, only to discover that all the other animals were lying dead also, apparently they literally been scared to death.

There are other, more fantastical reports of this creature's presence, but most of them are just too wild to believe. There is also no doubt in my mind that things have been left out of this story & that things were added in to make it sound worse/ better than it actually truly was. Such is the way of the things that are passed down by word of mouth over the decades.