The Cold Cult of The Yukon - SCP Foundation

crewtime 12/25/24 (WED) 14:21:28 #94926937

Merry Christmas and happy holidays, Parawatch. I hope you're all bundled up this winter season, as I have quite the cold case to share with you all. The records on this one are very few and far between, but I had a friend in Canada help me with some ground research.

At 7:56 PM on December 24th, 1999, a woman was kidnapped by two robed figures in front of one Mrs. Laura Chance's residence in rural Canada. Within two hours a manhunt unveiled a secret cult, merely moments after a ritualistic killing deep in the Yukon woodlands. Suspects were locked up, cleanup crews called, the incident tucked away, and the town utterly shaken to its core. A frightening and chilling case for sure — but, ultimately, a mundane one.

What makes this case cold is the fact that, in spite of the tiny size of the town, no one knew who the kidnapped woman was.

crewtime 12/25/24 (WED) 14:21:50 #94926938

Mrs. Laura Chance, age 62 and recently widowed, lived by herself in a three bedroom home just on the edge of Watson Lake, Canada. She spent most of her time knitting, reading, and watching television, occasionally visiting friends in the neighborhood. On this particular Christmas Eve in 1999, however, she's busy cleaning her home as the holiday spirit begins to set in, dutifully setting plates and hanging up decorations.

At precisely 7:56 PM MST — known only because Mrs. Chance checked her watch moments earlier — a woman's scream echoes across the house. Dropping everything, Mrs. Chance runs to her front door, and is met with a terrifying sight: a cloaked figure dragging a screaming, kicking woman across her front lawn towards an unmarked black van. After a few moments of shock, she dashes for the landline and dials emergency services.

Mrs. Chance speaks frantically into the phone. Although her report is sporadic and takes random turns, the dispatcher seems to pick up exactly what she's saying. Within mere minutes, a cop car is already set and ready to go. The hunt is on.

Surprisingly, officers in the area are quite quick to respond. Although a majority of them are off for the holidays, several are still on duty and eager for some action. Within another fifteen minutes, two more police cars mobilize and began the search, with several more gearing up for action behind them.

Watson Lake, being a small Yukon town, is directly on the Alaska Highway. Getting in and out undetected is no simple feat this time of year. That meant that, with their quick work, the police could lock down the region fast and begin searching for the van with a high confidence of catching it quickly.

They would not have to look for long. The van is found rapidly, within an hour of the call, abandoned by the side of the road on the edge of town. The officers step out of their car and begin examination, immediately spotting three sets of clear footprints, trailing deep into the woods.

One set was uneven, and smaller than the other two. A perfect match, with not a second to lose. They had found a path straight to the perpetrators… and the victim.

crewtime 12/25/24 (WED) 14:22:02 #94926939

Hot on the culprits' tails, the two officers at the scene — Christopher Cooper and Gwenda Dalton — set off without waiting for backup, relaying their plans to dispatch. The darkness and freezing snow means their progress is slow and difficult. However, the two persevere, even while the wind begins to pick up around them.

As the tracks deepen and become more defined, Officer Dalton notices a faint glow directly ahead of them, which she immediately mentions to dispatch. When they approach, the officers soon fall completely silent, and stop walking entirely. Christopher later commented:

It was nightmarish — something you'd see out of a cheap horror film, but gritty and physical. Me 'n Gwenda just about stopped and stared for a minute, trying to comprehend what the hell we were witnessing. If what we were lookin' at was even real.

The officers' bodycams show several robed, hooded figures standing in a circle, their hands raised as the wind howls around them. In frame are the bones of several animals littering the area, and various objects hang from the nearby trees in a circle. In other words, a cliche cult circle, complete with a ringleader standing above a corpse.

The moment they catch their bearings, the duo draw their weapons and promptly jump into action. Startled, several of the figures flee into the woods at the sight of the officers, while several others seem to double over or clutch their heads. The leader, in the middle, is too preoccupied with their ritual to notice.

Dalton and Cooper make quick work of the group. Within minutes, nearly all the suspects still present are safely in custody, all having gone willingly. Save for one, that is: the aforementioned cult leader, who only began to struggle as the pair moved to arrest them. The other officers, arriving minutes later, help take the group in. The other cultists, however, are long gone — a prospective manhunt is called off almost immediately due to the weather.

Records on the suspects in custody are sparse. There is, however, a throughline between all the records that are public: the cultists either suffer from amnesia, or are all very good at pretending to. No one at the cult site — save for the leader, whose transcripts aren't anywhere I can find — could remember why they were there, or what they were trying to do.

The leader was one Ms. Catherine Polley, a 25-year-old who lived in the area. I couldn't find anything particularly noteworthy about her life, though apparently she had been caught stealing signs from the Sign Post Forest, a local tourist trap, several weeks earlier. Similar — though heavily damaged — signs were found near the cult site. Besides that, though, all I could find was that she'd lived in the town her whole life, and apparently was an extremely bitter and spiteful person.

All these details on their own would be eyebrow-raising. A mass hysteria case led by a vindictive psychopath or people strung too far in over their heads, perhaps, but not necessarily supernatural.

What seals the deal for me is not the cultists. It's the body.

crewtime 12/25/24 (WED) 14:22:08 #94926940

It took almost no time for the police to determine that the woman was dead. Her body sat lifelessly in the now-darkened center of the cult site, snow beginning to bury her limbs. With the lead suspect in custody and the weather potentially causing issues, the shift supervisor gave approval for the body to be transferred to a nearby morgue for analysis.

The autopsy of the body took place on the 26th, after the holidays. Much to the surprise of the resident pathologist, no cause of death could be determined. There was no sign of physical injury (besides a broken wrist), blunt force trauma, toxicity buildup, or anything indicating foul play. Although hypothermia was the most likely cause of death, there was also nothing on the corpse that indicated death by exposure — save for some frostbite in the arms — and it seemed unlikely the cult would let her die naturally. The cause of death would ultimately be labeled as "Unknown, likely hypothermia."

What's even more mysterious is that, in the ensuing days, the woman could not be identified at all. Her DNA, fingerprints, and dental records did not match anyone in any known registry. No one interviewed in the region could identify her, nor had ever even seen her before. Even a vehicle found near the location of the kidnapping — believed to be owned by the victim — could not be traced to a specific owner.

It was though she had simply materialized from thin air, for the sole purpose of being killed.

At this point, records become practically non-existent. My best guess is that CSIS (Canada's FBI-equivalent) got involved and shut their investigation under a tight lock. That, unfortunately, gives us almost nothing to work with. Whether they're just as puzzled as us or have long solved the case, I have no idea. What I do know, though, is that within a week, every single outlet that had previously been following the story completely dropped it. Within a year, no one was talking about it anymore at all.

My own efforts to unravel this mystery — or, at least, write about it — have been mostly fruitless. No missing persons cases across Canada or the US even remotely match her description. No one's come forward online claiming to have known her. Her car has no prior sightings or records associated with the license plate. Barely anyone even mentions the case anymore, even the content farms that pump out true crime stories. Dead end after dead end.

Was she from a parallel universe? Was the cult? Did the cult's ritual somehow partially summon her into existence? Why? Is the government involved? Is the victim a foreign government agent, attempting to infiltrate some random Yukon town? Did she even know how she got there? Did the fact it happen on Christmas have anything to do with it at all?

I have no idea. Truthfully, I don't think we'll ever really know. The whole thing reeks of conspiracy or a supernatural phenomenon. Whatever the case may be, we can only hope that she's at peace now, whoever she was.

crewtime 12/25/24 (WED) 14:25:29 #94926943

But that's not really a satisfying ending, and I wouldn't leave you all with nothing of substance to chew on.

About a year after I initially shelved this post, a friend of mine — who wishes to remain anonymous — told me they were taking a trip through the Yukon. I remembered this case, and asked them if they'd do some ground research for me. They said yes.

I wish I could say they cracked the case open, but all I've got is more questions. Still, I think the questions are different enough to make this case worth sharing now.

To start off, some newspaper clippings in the local library reveal the ultimate fate of Ms. Polley: first-degree murder, kidnapping, and property theft charges, incurring a life sentence. That feels a little overkill to me personally, especially since we don't even know who the victim is or how she died. But, I'm not Canadian, so who can say.

Her current whereabouts are unknown, though presumably she's behind bars.

A different clipping — buried deep in the library's archives — reveals more about the cult site itself, though I don't know how much it illuminates. There were several urns containing ground-up bones, crow feathers, and other cult-adjacent items. There was a single burnt Polaroid, though it was too damaged to be legible.

Perhaps most baffling, though, were several license plates, road signs, and other similar landmark items stolen from the aforementioned Sign Post Forest, scattered around the area. All of them seem to have had the names of places they were from removed, almost seamlessly. No clue what to make of that, personally.

After that, my friend didn't seem to make much further progress. Asking the townsfolk was mostly a dead end; no one knew anything more than we did, in spite of the fact that it happened in that very same town.

There was still one more lead that we wanted to follow through on, though: Laura Chance is still alive. She lives in the same three bedroom home, alone, twenty-five years later. She is currently eighty-seven, though is — from what I'm told — in relatively good health.

When they met, she invited my friend inside for tea, and they had a pleasant chat. I have a recording of the conversation. While I don't think all of it is particularly pertinent — Mrs. Chance only had a passing role in the whole affair, after all — I do think there was one particular comment that caught my eye. I'll leave it off on this note.

Hm. After everything… I still don't know what to make of it, honestly. But I can tell you, my life's been emptier ever since it happened. I think seeing it on Christmas must've drained all the optimism out of me. A young girl pulled to her death right in front of my home, only years after my husband's passing… it hurt a fundamental part of my soul, I think.

A few days after the whole affair, the police came to ask me a couple of questions. I don't remember everything they said to me — I was just in so much shock — but… they showed me a picture of her face, and asked me, and I quote, "do you recognize her?". And as soon as I saw it, I just started breaking down, sobbing uncontrollably.

In all honesty… I still don't know why, all these years later. I had never seen her before in my life.