Lot 071 : The Timberbrook Hiking Trail Video

Today's episode is sponsored by I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Get It Now on Digital.

When five friends inadvertently cause a deadly car accident, they cover up their involvement and make a pact to keep it a secret rather than face the consequences.

A year later, their past comes back to haunt them, and they're forced to confront a horrifying truth.

Someone knows what they did last summer and is hell-bent on revenge.

As one by one, the friends are stalked by a killer.

They discover this happened before, so they turn to two survivors of the legendary Southport massacre of 1997 for help.

Starring Madeline Klein, Chase Sue Wonders, Jonah Hauer King with Freddie Prince Jr., and Jennifer Love Hewitt.

I know what you did last summer is a perfect summer slasher, says Jordan Cruciolo of NPR.

Your summer is not over yet.

Don't miss a killer movie night at home.

Welcome, friend.

Come in.

Come in.

You've chosen a fine day to wander into my little shop of forgotten treasures.

The air is just crisp enough to make you appreciate the warmth of a mystery, don't you think?

Ah, ha ha.

But what's this?

Your attention lingers on a shelf not often noticed.

Yes, an unassuming relic of a time not so distant, yet far removed from us in spirit.

An old VHS tape.

This one is stamped with fading letters that appear to read, The Timberbrook Hiking Trail Guide.

Harmless enough at first glance, wouldn't you say?

Here's where it gets...

peculiar.

This tape has a story of its own to tell.

So I must ask:

Did you by chance ever watch the Timberbrook hiking trailer video as a kid?

Before we begin, I want to point out some of the customers whose names have been etched in brass on this beautiful plaque I had made above the front desk.

These are some of the members of the inner circle of the antiquarium.

We go by the Obsidian Covenant.

Recent initiates include Jonathan Lundy, Tim Tweed,

Ivy Jones, Ron Robinson, Tosh Roulez,

Porrible,

Tara Hines,

Yolanda Peoples,

and Stephanie Williams.

We are ever appreciative of your devotion to the Order.

Go to theObsidian Covenant.com to receive the sacrament.

Now,

where were we?

Oh, yes,

welcome to the antiquarium of sinister happenings

and odd goings-on.

Did anyone else watch the Timberbrook hiking trail video as a kid?

Hey,

I'm writing this from a locked room upstairs at my husband's cabin.

It was supposed to be our two-year anniversary, but now

I'm not sure what the fuck it is.

For clarity, I just had a core memory unlock itself in unbelievably vivid fashion and needed to write down the details in case they might ring a bell for someone else.

The details surrounding the watching, kind of fuzzy, but I'll do my best.

The details around the tape itself,

oddly clear, despite all the time that's elapsed.

It was third grade.

A field trip to a nature trail.

The 30-minute bus ride, a remnant of a now bygone time, was boring.

The wheels on the bus take you somewhere you'd rather not be.

We arrived at the lodge-like area near the entrance to the trail.

Entering, I recall seeing stations with water and coffee and donuts, presumably just for the grown-ups,

and a sign-up sheet resting on a kind of tall table that all of us had to fill in with name, date, time.

It felt like the kind of place where a Smokey the Bear knockoff would give a talk about how fires are bad because trees are farmable, you morons.

A local visitor center vibe, like there is plenty to do here, but nothing really meant for someone my age.

Sign-ups completed for our class of 30, tall humans around us, tiny ones, and I hear the tour guide beside our teacher speak up.

Attention, everybody.

Okay, all right.

So, who's excited to go on this trail?

Huh?

Muted response from the kids.

Okay, lively bunch.

Yeah, fair enough.

Off we go.

We were shuffled like penguins to a space with rows of carefully arranged seats.

A TV perched on a cart, just like the good old days.

VHS player tucked into the shelf below.

I was queen of back of the line, watching classmates in front grapple with the existential crisis, that is, making sure all your friends sit next to you so you know they actually like you.

That's when I heard a second tour guide following closely behind speak.

Woof, looks like there might not be enough seats.

Why don't we take some of you to another room for the video?

His bouncer-like cutoff applied to the four of us at the end.

As he redirected us to the hallway, I distinctly remember noticing that there were more than enough seats for everyone, with the kids in the room meticulously choosing their spots.

Our gang of leftovers was brought to a much smaller room.

It looked like an extra big closet.

Four chairs already set up inside.

I crossed the threshold first and settled into one of them.

The others followed.

A tour guide turned on the TV,

pressed play on the VCR beside.

Dimmed the lights and walked out, closing the door behind him.

I then heard a click.

It sounded like a door locking.

But I wasn't sure.

Our dark little nook had two faint sources of light.

The brightness of the hallway barely squeezing through a small window, and the blue glare of TV as the presentation commenced.

A disarming, cozy, ambient tune laced with simple synth pads and light flutes met my ears.

The title screen appeared.

Timberbrook Hiking Trail Guide

Under the title Words broadcasted on a drop of expansive nature trail footage.

The following tagline appeared

for a great hiking experience and then a transition to a new title screen.

Supplies.

These words rested on a light green background with a picture of a cartoon backpack beside them.

The music changed.

A transitory bell chime, followed by a breezier and more upbeat arrangement.

It dawned on me at the time of watching

21 years ago today

that the video seemed dated.

Like,

really,

really dated.

On screen, make sure your backpack has,

and then video footage of different items with corresponding captions:

water,

snack,

A compass.

Shoes to wear.

I glanced over at the other kids.

They were trying their best to pay attention, albeit with drowsiness marking their illuminated faces.

A new title card on the CRT in front of us.

The hike.

Words displayed on the screen with a light blue backdrop this time.

This was followed by

a scene of arms linking with text at the bottom of the screen.

Pick your buddy.

A camera panning over a very clearly defined footpath in the woods.

When walking with your buddy, follow the trail ahead of you.

Make sure you're in line with the group.

Don't stray off course.

Tips and tricks.

What followed this title card was a series of cartoon diagrams looking straight out of an elementary school textbook with a tacky, dated screen transition between each image and tip.

Tip number one:

If you feel like you're lost, stop right

and listen to the sounds around you.

You might hear the road or people talking nearby.

This lengthy bit of text displayed across the screen beneath a drawing of a boy standing in the woods with a hand to his ear, listening with a smile.

Tip number two.

If you come across a log, step on the log, then off the log.

Do not step over it one leg at a time.

This tip paired with the progression of images showing a kid, as one would indeed imagine approaching a log, stepping on, and then off of it.

Tip number three: if you hurt yourself or have a wound.

Words accompanied by the image of a kid holding out their bleeding arm.

Air it out.

Then

a strange transition to clips of a real-life bleeding arm now,

held out in the forest air.

With each successive shot, the arm looks worse.

The wound,

the bleeding, almost gangrenous effect on the appendage growing.

I got to

the stairs.

A camera fixed on a lengthy staircase jutting out from somewhere in the woods.

Architecture that looked very out of place.

Don't take the stairs.

Friends.

A fancy new title card over a light red background.

The heading over top a display of cute cartoon woodland creatures huddled together, shifting to night footage with captions underneath of

squirrels,

birds,

deer,

foxes,

sleepwalkers.

Slow zoom in on a distant tree in the forest.

Someone peeking out from behind the oak.

A woman-like figure with black matted hair in a white nightgown.

Midnight.

And suddenly, the comforting background music was gone.

Amateur camcorder footage now of someone maneuvering the woods at night with only a minimal light source illuminating the uneven path.

Text coming in, line by line.

atop the footage.

If you're still here,

they'll be looking for you.

No panic.

There are many places you can hide.

A transition to a nighttime shot of some trees.

Behind the trees.

Slightly shaky, but mostly still footage of some leaves on the ground.

Still night.

Under the ground.

An even slower zoom in on a distant entrance to a passageway or cavern.

The dungeon.

The dungeon.

I felt the chair beneath me and remembered I was in a room with three other kids watching something.

My eyes were glued to the monitor.

I didn't feel comfortable looking to my left or to my right.

The imagery on screen wasn't resonating in any comfortable way.

But the childlike fear in me told me if I stopped watching,

something even worse would happen.

It was hard to tell what I was looking at.

The visuals on TV looked dark, thick, obscured.

Words that made no sense, but are the best descriptions I can muster.

Like

the sort of shapes you'd see with your eyes closed and palms pressed upon them.

As I tried to piece together what it was, text, in the color red this time, appeared at the bottom.

The dungeon might be a safe place to hide in for a little while.

The text disappeared faster than usual.

Slowly, the video began to clear.

The footage seemed to be taken in a dark, cluttered room.

Tables, shelves, materials, tools, all sorts of items crowding the space.

Near the top of the screen,

what looked like a window.

The sound of heavy breathing.

It seemed like the video was recorded by

someone crouching in the corner.

They might never suspect you would hide in the same place they were planning to bring you to.

Just don't stay there for too long.

Eyes appeared on the window.

Nature.

Oh, uh, once again, there was daylight on the screen.

Rivers, babbling brooks, and a friendly forest.

A reprieve that made my nine-year-old self think about the best way to delete everything I had seen from my brain.

My first tango with compartmentalization.

Nature, just

comforting nature scenes.

Nature is beautiful.

Take some time to appreciate its wonder.

The text lingered for for a beautiful while

before cutting to a new title card again.

The final one

as I would find out.

The cabin.

So sorry to have to press pause on the festivities.

I was just thinking, what is a movie without some snacks?

I'm just gonna head out to the lobby.

Do the same if you must.

And I'll be right back.

Today's episode is sponsored by I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Get it now on digital.

When five friends inadvertently cause a deadly car accident, they cover up their involvement and make a pact to keep it a secret rather than face the consequences.

A year later, their past comes back to haunt them and they're forced to confront a horrifying truth.

Someone knows what they did last summer and is hell-bent on revenge.

As one by one, the friends are stalked by a killer, they discover this happened before, so they turn to two survivors of the legendary Southport massacre of 1997 for help.

Starring Madeline Klein, Chase Sue Wonders, Jonah Howard King with Freddie Prince Jr., and Jennifer Love Hewitt.

I know what you did last summer is a perfect summer slasher, says Jordan Crucciolo of NPR.

Your summer is not over yet.

Don't miss a killer movie night at home.

Why, hello there.

You've reached the antiquarium.

If you wish to leave a message, please do so with the town and have a great day.

Hey, I just left the soft antiquarium and there was a cell phone that pointed to the basement.

And I went down and saw a bunch of cool stuff on the signs, but I can't even find the way out.

And everybody keeps playing it seems to be further back into the store.

Could you come show me the way out or let me out?

I'm getting dark.

I've been down here for 15 minutes now.

All right.

Wait, don't hey

end of messages.

Still with me.

Excellent.

Now that our intermission is over, let's be kind and rewind the Smidge and get right back to it.

Shall we?

Nature is beautiful.

Take some time to appreciate its wonder.

The text lingered for a beautiful while.

Before cutting to a new title card again.

The final one,

as I would find out.

The cabin.

A camera that must have been positioned high on a mountaintop, looking down at an expanse of forest from afar.

Daytime at first, but the footage quickly revealed itself to be a time-lapse.

tracking minor changes and movements before bringing us to the night

Then,

for the third time, the camera began to pan.

This time, painfully slow,

delving deeper

and deeper into the forest.

Granular details sharpened as it zoomed in.

I wondered just how far the seemingly telescopic lens could go.

closer

and closer.

Further

and further until landing on

a large cabin,

isolated in pitch black darkness.

It didn't belong with the rest of the forest.

Lights on in all the rooms.

A glare cast out on the dense woods surrounding.

Do not go near the cabin.

Mechanical sounds as the camera pushed in slightly closer.

With a different clearness as if the lens suddenly changed.

If you are near the cabin, do not go inside.

Silhouettes of what appeared to be people within the cabin.

If you are inside the cabin, do not leave.

It will be too late.

And then

the camera violently starting to pull back.

Away

and away

and away

from the cabin as

you are nourishment to them.

And back to the title card.

Timberbrook Hiking Trail Guide for a hiking experience.

Then the tape stopped.

And it was just our smudged reflections on the TV now.

We sat in the still of the dark.

No one one moved an inch.

The shared telepathic agreement we all seemed to fall under was

pretend everything is okay.

If none of us were ever scared, then we wouldn't give the game away.

If it looked like we were all right, then we were all right.

Right.

The tour guide returned.

He was hunky-dory as normal.

All right.

Looks like you're all done.

Ready to hike?

A muted response from us kids.

He motioned for us to follow, and so we did.

I'm not sure if it was a trick of sound or hallucination, but I remember the guide whispering.

Only to me it seemed

best of luck.

as we joined the larger group.

Whether this potential remark was tinged with sarcasm or sincerity, I wasn't sure.

The hike happened.

It was mundane, barely any elevation.

It wasn't a particularly dynamic path, more like a trudge through some level, open forest with an almost industrial-looking path leading the way through.

Like any in-depth video guide on the how of maneuvering this was completely pointless.

There was no way anyone could have gotten lost, and it looked nothing like the video we'd watched.

Only

one thing caught my eye on the trail:

the insignias that had been carved deep into the trees.

Elaborate scrawls and markings all along the path.

Then

it was all over.

Quicker than one one would have imagined.

And I had to wonder if the larger group of 26 students actually saw the same tape that my group did.

Or if ours was different.

Now, some odd 21 years later,

that same question cuts to the front of the line in my mind.

As I reconcile with the bizarre childhood experience I'd severed from my head for so many years.

It's my two-year anniversary, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post.

My husband pitched renting a cabin for the occasion.

Something I enthusiastically jumped at.

When it came to romantic gestures, this was more bombastic than anything he'd ever done and anything I'd ever experienced before.

Our love story origins are pretty unremarkable.

We actually met as a part of a local hiking group.

and struck it off immediately.

Five years of boyfriend, girlfriend, two years of husband-wife.

It's strange to me as I write all of this now that the traumatic experience of watching the Timberbrook guide didn't subconsciously put me off of hiking forever.

As I push myself to wonder why, I can't help but find those carved sigils popping up in my head again.

Hubby and I drove into the secluded area, and as we got closer, there was a familiarity

to the surroundings that I couldn't quite shake.

The uneasy gut feeling was manageable at first.

Unfortunately, when paired with my husband's increasingly bizarre behavior on the trip, it became harder to ignore.

We were supposed to be spending quality time together at the cabin, I thought.

Instead, he was

quiet,

stern,

always looking outside,

like he was

waiting for someone.

Then

at night,

after what I tried to justify as just an unbelievably off day for him, I woke up to find he wasn't in bed.

I left the room, creaked down the stairs to ground level to see him sitting on a couch and staring at the TV.

The stairs.

Before I even saw what was on screen,

the musical chimes and soothing ambient tunes I heard

brought the flood of memories back.

Don't take the stairs.

Friends,

midnight.

He

was was transfixed.

I ran back upstairs and locked the door to the bedroom.

After that, I tried to recall anything and everything I could about that video.

I noted it down in this post.

And now,

I'm trying really,

really hard not to panic.

It's been an hour.

I swear the tape has looped ten times over, judging by the muffled and obscured sounds coming through the wall.

It finally stopped only a few minutes ago.

There was at the door.

He's trying to reason with me.

Tell me there's nothing to be concerned about.

That we should go outside.

That he wants to show me something cool in the woods nearby.

Some passage in the ground.

And he says it.

As he says it, I can tell

there are other people standing there with him

trying to stay quiet.

It's only him talking, but still

I can hear their presence.

They're breathing.

I'm having to keep the part of me

that wants to jump out of the window and run into nowhere at bay.

After all,

I can see that there are people waiting outside too

there in the woods,

barely peeking out

from behind the trees,

a full crowd

who look very

much like the members of that same hiking group

my

husband at

I can hear

the tour guide's voice in my head again

more vivid

he really did say it

both sincerely

and

sarcastically

best of luck

best of luck

Best of luck

Best of Luck

X A L

S

Q M

W

V I W I V Z I H X, L, I, F, P, E, G, O, R, I, W, W,

S, J, H, E, V, O, R, I,

W, W, J, S, V, I,

C, I, V.

Thank you for your patronage.

Hope you enjoyed your new relic as much as I've enjoyed passing along its sordid history.

It does come with our usual warning, however.

Absolutely no refunds, no exchanges, and we won't be held liable for anything that may or may not occur while the object is in your possession.

If you've got an artifact with mysterious properties, perhaps it's accompanied by a history of bizarre and disturbing circumstances.

Maybe you'd be interested in dropping it and its story by the shop to share with other customers.

Please reach out to antiquariumshop at gmail.com.

A member of our team will be in touch.

Till next time, we'll be waiting for you whenever you close your eyes

in the space between sleep and dream.

During regular business hours, of course, or by appointment only for you

our

best customer

you have a good night now

the antiquarium of sinister happenings lot 071 did anyone else watch the timberbrook hiking trail video as a kid written by mo T starring Romy Evans as the woman Dane Scott as the narrator, Trevor Shand as Tour Guide 1, Jeffrey Allen Sneed as Tour Guide 2, featuring Stephen Knowles as the antique dealer.

Engineering production and sound design by Trevor Shand.

Theme music by the Newton Brothers.

Additional music by Coag and Vivek Abishek.

The Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings is created and curated by Trevor and Lauren Shand.

Follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Antiquarium Pod.

Call the Antiquarium at 646-481-7197.

Hello, and welcome to the world of Scare You to Sleep.

I'm your host, Shelby Novak, a show for those of us who need something a little stronger than counting sheep, who find horror to be a strangely relaxing escape.

Here, you'll find a myriad of fright-filled tales, from fictional to true stories, to high strangeness to guided nightmares, where I take you on a journey through your own personal nightmare.

So come get lost in the terror with me.

Listen to Scare You to Sleep, wherever you listen to podcasts, sweet screams.