Speaker 1: Long before any camera crew hiked their gear up Timberline Ridge,
Speaker 1: the place already carried a reputation one whispered about in diners, trailheads,
Speaker 1: and old ranger stations, where folks spoke softly without meaning to.
Speaker 1: People said the ridge held its own kind of life,
Speaker 1: a watchful presence that stirred after dusk. Now and then,
Speaker 1: travelers reported seeing bluish white lights drifting between the trees,
Speaker 1: moving slow and silent, like they were choosing their path
Speaker 1: with intention. Others described voices, low layered, speaking a language
Speaker 1: no one could place. And then there were those sightings sasquatch.
Speaker 1: To be more exact, this place is well known for
Speaker 1: having them, spanning back decades. Most stayed away, but when
Speaker 1: a small film production arrived with their bright lamps and
Speaker 1: big ambitions, the forest didn't hide. It simply weighted, because
Speaker 1: on Timberline Ridge, every light tells a story, and not
Speaker 1: all stories want to be told. Pull your chairs in
Speaker 1: a little closer to the fire, my friends. Tonight's story
Speaker 1: takes us back almost twenty years back, when the Internet
Speaker 1: was young, streaming was an experiment, and cameras still took
Speaker 1: tapes and then clicked when you close them. Back when
Speaker 1: straight to digital didn't mean global release. It meant maybe
Speaker 1: a few thousand downloads if you were lucky. And that
Speaker 1: all happened on the edge of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest,
Speaker 1: a place already whispered about for strange things and visitors
Speaker 1: that don't care much for being seen. This is lights
Speaker 1: over Timberline Ridge. There are two kinds of lights people
Speaker 1: talk about up there. The first are the bluish white
Speaker 1: orbs that drift between the trees long after the sun
Speaker 1: goes down. Quiet, slow, sometimes load the forest floor, sometimes
Speaker 1: high enough to vanish behind the branches. Locals don't try
Speaker 1: to photograph them, not anymore. They just nod and say yeah.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the woods light up on their own. The second
Speaker 1: those belong to people. The lights the crew of a
Speaker 1: low budget movie production hauled deep into the Timberline standing rigs,
Speaker 1: battery packs, clunky portable floods from the early two thousands.
Speaker 1: Lights meant to illuminate a set that frankly didn't want
Speaker 1: them there. Most stories start with a hero. This one
Speaker 1: starts with a man who only ever pretends to be one.
Speaker 1: His name was Dane Work. Back then, if he squinted,
Speaker 1: he looked a little bit like he was meant for something. Big, square,
Speaker 1: jaw lean muscle, the kind of guy who could pass
Speaker 1: for a Special Forces on a DVD cover at Blockbuster.
Speaker 1: He wasn't famous, not even close, but he had enough
Speaker 1: ambition to fill the trunk of his dented Hantasivic Dane
Speaker 1: moved to California of two things, becoming an action star,
Speaker 1: the kind whose face ends up on posters, the other
Speaker 1: getting noticed at Venice Beach, where the real life legends
Speaker 1: of bodybuilding lifted under an open sky. He'd walk past
Speaker 1: those bodybuilders day after day, slowing down just enough to
Speaker 1: hope one of them would kind of nod his way,
Speaker 1: who would wave him over, maybe tell him he was
Speaker 1: a potential. No one ever did, so he kept chasing
Speaker 1: the other dream, the one with scripts and auditions and
Speaker 1: a portfolio full of overly dramatic head shots that he
Speaker 1: couldn't really afford. By the time he landed the lead
Speaker 1: role in The Timber Line, his career hadn't climbed. It
Speaker 1: had wobbled. A restaurant shift here, a grocery store job there,
Speaker 1: the occasional background role where his face barely made it
Speaker 1: on screen. But this movie, this was supposed to change everything.
Speaker 1: A special Ops soldier turned soldier of fortune, wandering the
Speaker 1: wilderness on a mission of justice, a role where fifty
Speaker 1: percent of the performance was physique and the other fifty
Speaker 1: percent was looking serious and speaking in monotone. It didn't
Speaker 1: need finesse, It just needed Dane. The distribution plan was
Speaker 1: cutting edge at the time, straight to a digital platform
Speaker 1: that people barely understood, a thing called unbox, an early
Speaker 1: ancestor of a titan in what would become the ultimate
Speaker 1: archive in video. Back then, it wasn't glamorous, but to
Speaker 1: Dane it meant possibility. He took the job before the
Speaker 1: producer even finish the sentence. The crew arrived on Timberline
Speaker 1: Ridge in the early summer, hauling crates of aging equipment,
Speaker 1: bundled cables, and the sort of enthusiasm only small productions
Speaker 1: have a handful of recent film school grads, a director
Speaker 1: with a fading dream of his own, and a caste
Speaker 1: who'd never seen their names on a marquee. They didn't
Speaker 1: know much about the land they were stepping on. They
Speaker 1: didn't know the stories, they didn't know the warnings. But
Speaker 1: the locals who dropped off supplies, did you shooting up
Speaker 1: on that ridge, one of the old men said, squinting
Speaker 1: at their gear. Yeah, said the director, perfect location, right.
Speaker 1: The old man paused a long moment before saying quietly,
Speaker 1: just make sure you leave it the way you found it.
Speaker 1: Dane brushed it off. He was too busy preparing his
Speaker 1: tough guy person, checking himself in the reflection of the
Speaker 1: truck window, adjusting his fake tactical harness, and practicing his scowl.
Speaker 1: But the Woods noticed the moment they arrived. The first
Speaker 1: odd thing was small. Someone's sandwich vanished from the cooler,
Speaker 1: Then a whole bag of apples. Then a prop knife
Speaker 1: that was supposed to be on the table turned up
Speaker 1: thirty yards away, stuck perfectly straight upright in the dirt.
Speaker 1: The assistant director chalked it up to raccoons. But raccoons
Speaker 1: don't unzip backpacks, and they definitely don't close the zipper again.
Speaker 1: A few days later, Dane was running lines alone at
Speaker 1: the edge of camp when he heard something he couldn't
Speaker 1: quite place, a low rhythmic chatter rolling and layered like
Speaker 1: two giant voices speaking a language too fast to decode.
Speaker 1: He froze, The sound faded, and when he told the director,
Speaker 1: the man just waved it off. Probably animals, you're getting
Speaker 1: too deep into character. But Dane wasn't so sure. Still,
Speaker 1: they pushed on with production. Scenes were shot, lines delivered,
Speaker 1: and every time something strange happened, the camera wasn't rolling.
Speaker 1: Part of that was human error. This was a cheap
Speaker 1: set with a tired crew. Someone forgot to clean a lens,
Speaker 1: someone else forgot to hit record. A tripod wasn't tightened,
Speaker 1: a tape wasn't loaded correctly. But the other part wasn't
Speaker 1: human at all. Batteries fresh that morning would plunge from
Speaker 1: eighty percent to zero in minutes. A field light would
Speaker 1: flicker and die, only to turn back on an hour
Speaker 1: later with a full charge. Audio packs would shut off
Speaker 1: with no warning, even though they were tested every morning.
Speaker 1: The cinematographer muttered once under his breath, it's like something's
Speaker 1: drawing the power out here. No one wanted to unpack
Speaker 1: that sentence. After nearly a week of setbacks, the director
Speaker 1: decided the team needed a break two days back in
Speaker 1: town to recharge, literally and figurely. They covered the lights,
Speaker 1: stashed the gear, locked down what they could, and drove out.
Speaker 1: When they returned. Something on timberline ridge had changed in
Speaker 1: the midst of their filming area. Dead center, right where
Speaker 1: they had planned to shoot the climax, stood a massive
Speaker 1: dead tree, trunk rammed into the earth, upside down, roots
Speaker 1: reached towards the sky, base buried deep in the soil.
Speaker 1: No drag marks, no machine prints, no explanation. It hadn't fallen,
Speaker 1: It hadn't been moved by wind. It had just been placed.
Speaker 1: Dane stared at it for a long time before whispering,
Speaker 1: that wasn't here when we left right No one answered him.
Speaker 1: The whole camp felt different after that, quieter, tenser, like
Speaker 1: the forest was leaning in. But you know how production works.
Speaker 1: They were behind, they were tired, they were under pressure,
Speaker 1: so they filmed around the tree. The last day of
Speaker 1: shooting was supposed to be Dane's big moment, his tracking scene,
Speaker 1: him alone in the woods, playing the hardened operative hunting
Speaker 1: down a dangerous fugitive. It was the scene that would
Speaker 1: make or break this movie. It turned out to be
Speaker 1: the scene that broke something else entirely. The cinematographer, carrying
Speaker 1: a heavy early two thousands hand held, followed Dane into
Speaker 1: the tree line. The boom operator trailed behind The rest
Speaker 1: of the crew stayed farther back, listening through their radios.
Speaker 1: As dusk settled in, Dane crouched, rifle propped tight in
Speaker 1: his hand, breathing slow and controlled. The director whispered into
Speaker 1: the radio, okay action, and they started moving. Leaves crunched
Speaker 1: softly under Dane's boots. The cameraman pans slowly, capturing the
Speaker 1: tension in his shoulders. The forest was quiet, too quiet.
Speaker 1: Then it began. A bluish white light pulsed through the
Speaker 1: trees off to the right, smooth, silent, drifting low across
Speaker 1: the ground, before rising just high enough to vanish behind
Speaker 1: a branch. Did you get that, The boom operator whispered,
Speaker 1: I know. Battery just dropped to two percent, how it
Speaker 1: was at sixty ten minutes ago. Before anyone could think,
Speaker 1: the chatter started rolling guttural, intelligent right behind them. Dane froze.
Speaker 1: The cameraman, trying to adjust, fumbled with the focus ring.
Speaker 1: The boom operator lifted his mic, only to watch the
Speaker 1: power light blink off. Then something moved, not close, not far,
Speaker 1: just at the edge of vision. A shape stepped into
Speaker 1: a thin sliver of fading light. It wasn't a bear.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a man, It wasn't anything. The script had
Speaker 1: prepared Dane for massive, broad breathing, slow and deliberate, eyes
Speaker 1: reflecting amber from the dimness, for a heartbeat, just one.
Speaker 1: The creature and Dane looked at each other, not as
Speaker 1: predator and prey, but as the real thing and the
Speaker 1: man pretending to be it. Every lie Dane told himself
Speaker 1: folded in on him at once. The prop rifle slipped
Speaker 1: from his fingers, landing in the moss with a soft thud,
Speaker 1: and the scream that tore out of him wasn't the
Speaker 1: scream of a soldier. It was the scream of a
Speaker 1: man whose entire identity had just collapsed. He ran, The
Speaker 1: cameraman shouted, the boom operator tripped. No one got the shot.
Speaker 1: Of course, no one got the shot. By the time
Speaker 1: they reached Dane, he was on his knees, trembling, whispering
Speaker 1: over and over. It looked at me. It knew I
Speaker 1: wasn't real. No one stayed on Timberline Ridge after that night.
Speaker 1: Not one of them wanted to. The director called an
Speaker 1: end to production. The set was struck, the tapes were boxed,
Speaker 1: The movie was never finished, and those lights, the orbs,
Speaker 1: and the rigs alike left the ridge the way the
Speaker 1: old man had suggested, just as they found it. Some
Speaker 1: say strange things still happen up there. Some say the
Speaker 1: woods still light up. Some say a newcomer wandering too
Speaker 1: far past dusk might hear the same rolling chatter Dame did.
Speaker 1: And some say the forest remembers when people try to
Speaker 1: bring their own lights into a place that already has
Speaker 1: its own. Two kinds of lights. Over Timberline Ridge, only
Speaker 1: one kind belongs, and the forest well, the forest decided
Speaker 1: which is which. Years passed, and the unfinished movie faded
Speaker 1: into the same obscurity that claimed most small productions of
Speaker 1: its time. Dame Rourke drifted on to quieter work, never
Speaker 1: again speaking of what he saw or what saw him
Speaker 1: deep in those woods. The crews scattered, each carrying their
Speaker 1: own private memory of the ridge, something they couldn't quite
Speaker 1: explain and didn't care to reveal or even revisit. But
Speaker 1: Timberline Ridge remained unchanged. The trees still leaned into the
Speaker 1: wind the same way, the trail still narrowed after dusk,
Speaker 1: and now and then some one hiking too late would
Speaker 1: swear they'd seen a pale blue glow sliding through the timber,
Speaker 1: a light that moved with intention. Locals say the ridge
Speaker 1: keeps its stories and the forest remembers those who tried
Speaker 1: to shine their own lights where they didn't belong. Thanks
Speaker 1: for sitting with me by the fire to night. This
Speaker 1: is Bigfoot's wilderness. Stay alert, stay respectful, and whatever you do,
Speaker 1: don't follow the lights.