The Nahanni Valley is a vast expanse of land in Canada’s Northwest Territories. The Nahanni Valley is a region in Nahanni National Park, in the Dehcho region of the Northwest Territories, about 500 kilometres west of Yellowknife. It’s a huge, remote and inhospitable area that you can only visit by plane or boat. It’s well known for the South Nahanni River and four 3,000+ foot canyons, called First, Second, Third and Fourth Canyons respectively, which line the river. It has some of the most diverse landforms in the country, with canyons, caves, tufa mounds and a waterfall twice the height of Niagara Falls all in the valley.

Animals thrive here too, given its remote location and general absence of humans. Bears, wolves, bison, caribou, owls and even the elusive wolverine all call the Nahanni home, within the mountains, plains, spruce and aspen forests of this massive area. It’s a land of jagged mountains, harsh forests and eerie fogs – a place steeped in supernatural lore and mystery, best reflected in its better-known moniker: ‘Valley of Headless Men’. The Dene people who lived in the Nahanni for at least 10,000 years prior to the arrival of European explorers in the late 18th century had long spoken of mythical creatures, hidden tropical gardens and rivers that should be avoided at all costs. There may be good reasons for that. At least four headless bodies have turned up in the Nahanni Valley since the early 1900s.

There are at least five mysteries tied to the Nahanni Valley, but the most famous and likely the one you’ve heard, is the mystery of the headless bodies. That’s where the Nahanni gets its rather creepy moniker ‘Valley of the Headless Bodies’. People have vanished here, be they explorers, miners, plane pilots and others who simply dared set foot in this foreboding region. More abstract, however, is the Nahanni’s reputation as being a place of evil, where men disappear after going downstream, tribes mysteriously vanish without a trace, giants that cook meals in the valley’s hot spring, and harbingers of doom when that spring is empty.