A Logging Crew Was Attacked by Bigfoot… The Aftermath Was Far More Terrifying Than the Attack
THE RIDGE WHERE THE FOREST WATCHED BACK
Chapter 1: The Job That Paid Too Well
By late September of 2014, I was running a small logging crew deep in the Cascades, about forty miles outside Forks, Washington. It was good money—better than most contracts that season—and the company wanted results fast. Old-growth timber. Clean permits. Tight schedule. Prep the land before winter or lose the window entirely.
.
.
.
There were six of us. Men who knew the work, knew the risks, and didn’t ask many questions. Logging doesn’t leave much room for philosophy. You show up at dawn, work until your body begs you to stop, then do it again the next day. The forest was dense out there—Douglas fir, western red cedar, trees older than the towns we lived in. The air always smelled like sap and wet earth, even on dry days.
We staged the equipment at the end of an abandoned logging road. No fences. No guards. Just machines parked in a row and a single security camera I’d installed after a chainsaw went missing weeks earlier. The first two weeks passed without incident. Then the forest started feeling… off.
It wasn’t fear, not at first. Just unease. Tools left where no one remembered placing them. Fuel cans tipped over. A small pile of stones stacked neatly near the treeline, almost ceremonial. We joked about it. People always do before they stop joking.
The dogs noticed before we did.
Chapter 2: Signs We Chose to Ignore
The hunting dogs wouldn’t go near the trees anymore. Animals that had grown up in the woods suddenly refused to cross invisible lines. They whined, paced, tucked their tails like they were sensing something we couldn’t. We blamed bears. Cougars. Anything reasonable.
By the third week, the silence became heavier. Conversations dropped off earlier in the day. Men packed up before sunset. One of the older loggers mentioned a sound he’d heard after dark—something like a scream, but deeper, stretched, almost wrong. He swore it wasn’t elk. He’d heard elk his whole life.
I logged it mentally and moved on. I’d been doing this work for fifteen years. You don’t survive long by chasing ghosts.
That Friday, I locked up the site and drove home with a feeling I couldn’t shake. The sense of being watched followed me all the way down the road, clinging like fog. I told myself it was exhaustion. The forest has a way of getting into your head.
That weekend passed quietly. Football. Beer. Normal life. By Sunday night, I’d almost forgotten about the unease—until I got a call from one of my operators. He said he thought he’d seen a glow up near the site. Maybe a fire. I brushed it off. Moonlight. Reflection. Nothing more.
I slept poorly anyway.
Chapter 3: The Morning After
We arrived early Monday, mist hanging low between the trees. I was the first truck to round the bend into the staging area. I stopped so hard my seatbelt locked.
The skitter was on its side like a discarded toy. The loader’s arm was twisted at an impossible angle. The foreman trailer had been shoved several feet from where it had stood, deep gouges torn through the soil. Hydraulic fluid bled into the moss. Metal panels were bent backward, peeled like skin.
Nobody spoke as the rest of the crew arrived. We just stood there, staring, trying to force logic into something that refused it. This wasn’t vandalism. This wasn’t animals scavenging. This was destruction with intent.
Then we found the footprints.
Bare. Massive. Sunk deep into soft earth near the treeline. I knelt and placed my hand inside one. It didn’t come close to filling it. The stride between prints was enormous. Whatever made them walked upright—and heavy.
That’s when I remembered the camera.
Chapter 4: What the Camera Saw
I pulled the DVR from the trailer and played the footage on my laptop. Most of the night showed nothing but shadows shifting in the wind. Then, at 2:47 a.m., movement.
A figure emerged from the trees.
It was tall—far too tall. Broad shoulders. Long arms swinging with purpose. It walked on two legs without hesitation, without awkwardness. The night vision washed everything in green, but the shape was unmistakable. It stopped at the skitter, stood there for a moment, almost as if considering it.
Then it tore the machine apart.
Metal screamed. The cab door ripped free and flew aside. Hydraulic lines were pulled out like weeds. The figure worked methodically, efficiently, not in a frenzy. When it crouched and lifted the skitter, tipping it over with terrifying ease, the ground seemed to shake.
Before leaving, it turned toward the camera.
For one second, we saw its face—flat, broad, eyes reflecting infrared light with an awareness that made my stomach drop. Then it vanished back into the forest.
No one laughed. No one denied it.
We all knew.
Chapter 5: The Ridge
I told the company it was vandalism. I didn’t show them the footage. Insurance adjusters can explain anything away if you give them room. The crew didn’t want to return, but fear alone isn’t enough to stop contracts. I needed answers.
The next morning, I went back alone.
The footprints led uphill toward a ridge where the canopy thickened and the forest grew darker. I followed them until I found it—a shelter built into the hollow of an ancient cedar. Branches bent and woven together with care. Inside, the ground was pressed flat like bedding.
And there were smaller footprints.
Cubs.
That’s when I smelled it. Wet fur. Earth. Something alive and watching. I turned slowly and saw her—standing thirty feet away, half-hidden behind a tree. Massive. Silent. Not aggressive. Just watching.
She could have ended me right there. Instead, she stepped back into the shadows and disappeared.
The message was clear.
Chapter 6: The Choice
At the diner, I told the crew everything. The shelter. The cubs. The footage. Nobody argued after watching it again. The question wasn’t what we’d seen. It was what we were willing to do about it.
If the footage went public, the forest would be swarmed. Cameras. Hunters. Researchers. Whatever lived up there wouldn’t survive the attention. I made the call. We’d delete the footage. Halt work. Let the forest reclaim the site.
It wasn’t bravery. It was responsibility.
I destroyed the only copy myself. Hammered the drive. Threw it away. The company reassigned us. The site was abandoned. Winter came early that year, sealing the ridge in snow.
A few weeks later, I found a woven circle of branches placed carefully on my truck hood. A gift. Or a reminder.
I kept it.
Chapter 7: What Remains
Years passed. The forest healed. The crew moved on. I changed the way I worked—listened more, pushed less. When signs appeared, I redirected operations. No more wrecked machines. No more warnings.
I returned to the ridge once, years later. The shelter was gone. The cedar still stood. At its base lay a smooth black stone and a small tuft of dark fur, placed deliberately. I didn’t take the fur. I took the stone.
I’m retired now. The world still debates whether Bigfoot is real. I don’t. I’ve seen proof strong enough to destroy machines and gentle enough to spare a man who didn’t belong.
Some truths aren’t meant to be proven.
They’re meant to be protected.
