Anjikuni: The Inuit Village That Vanished, and the Story Turned into an Alien Abduction

In November 1930, fur trapper Joe Labelle reached a camp beside Lake Angikuni in what is now Canada’s Kivalliq region. He had visited the place before to ask for shelter and food. This time, six skin tents were still standing, but the people were gone. Cooking pots, boots, parkas, tools, and an old rifle had been left behind. Outside, several dogs were dead and others were reduced to skin and bone. One stone-covered grave had been taken apart.

That is the core of the story printed in the Halifax Herald on November 30, 1930, then distributed through the Newspaper Enterprise Association to newspapers in Canada and the United States. A reprint in The Danville Bee counted about 25 people, not the 1,200 or 2,000 used in later versions. Labelle did not say that he saw a flying saucer. He described a camp that looked abandoned in the middle of ordinary life, with no people or dogs in sight.