Begich Towers: Whittier, Alaska
https://youtube.com/shorts/LJi6MzX0e84
Deep in the shadowed heart of Alaska, where the jagged peaks of Prince William Sound pierce the heavens, lies Whittier—a forsaken outpost shrouded in eternal mist. Here, the desolate town clings to survival, its 200 souls bound within the looming monolith of Begich Towers. This is no mere dwelling, but a labyrinthine fortress, a concrete crypt where nearly all reside, their lives entwined in a web of necessity and dread. Within its walls, a post office, a meager store, a school, and a church whisper of normalcy, yet the air hums with an unspoken terror—an ancient, restless force that haunts the corridors of this forsaken place.
Forged in 1957, during the bleak chill of the Cold War, Begich Towers—once the Hodge Building—was a bastion for the U.S. Army, its bomb-proof bones meant to shelter over 1,000 soldiers against the wrath of nature and man. Whittier’s cruel elements—198 inches of rain, 258 inches of snow, and winds that howl at 80 mph—made it a strategic refuge, a port veiled by storms. When the military abandoned it in the 1960s, the structure endured the 1964 Good Friday earthquake, a 9.2 magnitude cataclysm that tore southern Alaska asunder. Renamed in 1972 for the vanished Congressman Nick Begich, it became a residential sepulcher by 1974, its 196 chambers now home to the town’s forsaken. The school, linked by a subterranean passage, and the upper floors’ bed-and-breakfast offer a veneer of life, but the weight of its past presses ever downward.
Life within this gothic citadel is a tapestry of shadow and survival. The Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel, a 2.5-mile gash through the mountain, seals Whittier from the world each night at 10:30 PM, locking its denizens in a prison of their own making. Here, community festers in close quarters—neighbors spy through binoculars, seeking whales or secrets in equal measure. Mayor Dave Dickason speaks of a “magical” bond, where the school’s 50 children are tended with care, their breakfasts delivered by spectral hands. Yet whispers of discontent echo through the beige corridors: the single store offers little, and Anchorage lies a grueling 60 miles away. The isolation gnaws at the mind, a relentless specter driving some to madness, their whispers lost in the howling winds.
But darker forces stir within Begich Towers, their presence a stain upon its soul. The halls, cloaked in eternal twilight, resonate with the footfalls of unseen watchers—ghostly echoes that fade into silence. Cold gusts sweep through chambers, unbidden, as if the breath of the dead seeks to speak. Residents murmur of shadowy wraiths that glide through walls, of cabinets that shudder with the hunger of lost spirits, and a chilling whistle that pierces the night. Some blame the nearby Buckner Building, a crumbling Cold War relic where despair hangs heavy, its own hauntings bleeding into the Towers. The town’s solitude, its endless winters cloaked in darkness, fuels these tales—yet skeptics claim it’s merely the mind’s descent into paranoia, a product of living entombed with no escape. But for those who’ve felt the icy touch, the truth is undeniable: something ancient and malevolent lingers here, watching from the abyss.
Begich Towers stands as a monument to human endurance, yet it is a mausoleum where the past refuses to rest. Its concrete heart beats with the echoes of a bygone era, a gothic enigma wrapped in fog and frost. To step within is to court the unknown, to hear the whispers of the damned in the stillness of the night. Dare you cross the threshold, seeker of the arcane, and face what dwells in the shadows? Share your thoughts below, and join us as we unearth more relics of the unseen.