Dig a Secret Hole on a Volcano and Don't Ask Questions. That Was the Job

Summary

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What It Was Like – Episode Summary

Podcast: What It Was Like
Host: Julian Morgans (Superreal)
Guest: Brett Grimes
Episode: Dig a Secret Hole on a Volcano and Don't Ask Questions. That Was the Job
Date: March 28, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode features the surreal and mysterious true story of Brett Grimes, who, at 19, took a seemingly simple labor job on the slopes of Mount Shasta in Northern California in 2009. The task: dig a deep, secretive hole, don’t ask questions, and follow increasingly strange and risky rules. Brett recounts how he got the job, what the work entailed, the ominous circumstances, the cultish rumors surrounding their purpose, and what he ultimately learned about himself from the risky episode.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Brett’s Background and Finding the Job (05:12–07:09)

• Personal Backstory: Raised in a small Southern Oregon town, blue-collar upbringing, outdoorsy, military service, later moved to Montana.
• Life at 19: Recession-era 2009, looking for odd jobs, found a listing to "build a fence line" on Mount Shasta.
• First Contact: Phone call for the job felt normal; no red flags at first.

Quote:
"I saw one that said, looking for a hand to build a fence line on Mount Shasta... I can do almost anything with my hands. So I called him up, and a guy answered... No red flags in my head whatsoever at that point." (06:15–07:27, Brett Grimes)

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2. Arrival and Early Red Flags (07:48–10:02)

• Mount Shasta Description: Rugged, ancient, with an eerie, prehistoric feel; cinematic wilderness.
• First Night: Checked into a cheap motel, met the crew lead (ex-convict, visibly “gang affiliated"), but seemed okay at first.
• Nerves and Commitment: Brett was determined to prove himself, set aside initial suspicions.

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3. The Real Job Is Revealed – Digging the Mysterious Shaft (10:05–14:26)

• First Day On Site: Expected fencing supplies but saw none.
• Strange Instructions: Multiple crewmembers had all been told different reasons for being there (fence, barn, etc.).
• Discovery: The site revealed a straight, massive hole over 20 feet deep on a steep slope, through undisturbed forest.
• Job Details: Pulling buckets of dirt/boulders out of the hole using a rigged pulley system; safety was minimal, secrecy was paramount.

Quote:
"The trail opened up, and there is a massive hole in the ground... What are we doing here?" (11:23–12:32, Brett Grimes)

• Rules: Extract anything "unusual," all workers must turn away as findings are inspected by a foreman and geologist; found rocks regularly, no explanations given.

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4. Life in Secrecy – Unusual Practices and Growing Suspicion (14:26–21:11)

• Questioning the Purpose: Eventually Brett breaks silence, asking what they're really looking for. The crew’s demeanor changes—"We don't know. But if we find anything strange, get it out...everyone faces away."
• Lead Characters:
  • Joseph (the boss): Always in a suit, stressed, running the operation.
  • Koki (the geologist): Ex-Navy, dressed like workers, examined rocks.
• Crew Tension: Praise for Brett’s work ethic, strict reinforcement of rules when objects are found. Ongoing mystery creates unease.
• Technical Contribution: Brett offers old-school solutions for splitting boulders, quickly becoming an “asset” to the operation.

Quote:
"Every time we found something, we would pull it out of the hole. And the rule was: instantly, everyone faces away. And so it was like...why are we doing it this way?" (01:43–02:31, Brett Grimes)

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5. Escalating Paranoia and Talk of Danger (21:21–24:46)

• Crew’s Fears: Secrecy grows; some crew stash weapons, fearing they might be “gotten rid of” if something valuable is found.
• Personal Realization: Brett recognizes he's at risk—no one knows where he is, most crewmates are ex-cons or addicts, and he’s the outsider.
• Possible Motives: Rumors and fears that the operation is illegal, possibly dangerous, and their safety is not guaranteed.

Quote:
"What if they kick us in the fucking hole?" (21:11–21:24, Brett Grimes)

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6. Discovery of Local Cult Lore and Mount Shasta Legends (24:46–32:09)

• Breaking to Friends: Brett confides to friends, who urge him not to return.
• Local Legend: Introduced by a neighbor to the St. Germain myth and the I AM movement—an esoteric cult claiming hidden Lemurian cities inside Mount Shasta. Brett suspects the excavation is cult-driven.
• Heightened Anxiety: Now, with cult rumors swirling and the job turning riskier, paranoia among the crew escalates.

Quote:
"She hands me this book... it's a book on Mount Shasta...and it says Saint Germain. I start reading...and that's when the word 'cult' popped into my head." (24:46–27:31, Brett Grimes)

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7. The Final Days: Paranoia, Pressure, and Extraction (38:29–46:19)

• Tension Peaks: As work wraps up, the crew becomes silent, fearful, arming themselves, and focusing only on the task.
• Strange Newcomer: Joseph brings his disabled brother who silently observes Brett, increasing unease.
• Brett’s Resilience: Despite mounting red flags, Brett refuses to quit out of pride—“I did not want to be the first guy to quit.”

Quote:
"Now I'm having conversations with myself. There's a voice in my head that's telling me to leave, leave, leave. And I did, whether it was pride or whatever... let's get this money and go home." (40:49–41:56, Brett Grimes)

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8. The Last Night: The Secret Removal (47:46–55:35)

• Climax: Brett and the crew lead are tasked, under cover of darkness, to transport all extracted boulders by truck to a storage facility.
• Logistics of Secrecy: No other crew are called, they’re told to hurry, and the process involves physically strenuous, back-breaking work.
• Hand-off: At sunrise, they deliver the rocks to U-Haul trucks already fitted with cradles, supervised by Joseph—then it’s over.
• Aftermath: Brett flees town, feeling relieved but troubled, contemplating the potential criminality and danger.

Quote:
"We just worked all night... two U-Haul moving trucks pull up... they had already framed rock cradles... within minutes, they were gone." (49:02–53:00, Brett Grimes)

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9. The Mystery Remains: What Were the Boulders? (55:35–61:03)

• Enduring Questions: Brett never learned what they actually found—speculates on crystals, geodes, uranium, or cult-related relics—none quite fit what he saw.
• Speculation:
  • Geodes: Unlikely (didn’t look right).
  • Uranium: No Geiger counters were used.
  • Relics: No clear evidence.
• Final Lesson: A haunting, unresolved episode that shaped Brett’s perspective on risk, trust, and his own judgment.

Quote:
"This is what sucks too, is I'm still sitting here, you know, like I was 19 years old, I'm turning 37 in May, and I think about this all the time." (56:29–56:42, Brett Grimes)

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10. Personal Reflection and Takeaways (61:03–62:12)

• What Brett Learned: Trusting his gut, recognizing his tendency to put pride over safety, and understanding the limits of his own risk tolerance—especially now, as a parent.
• Life-Changing Story: Brett admits, “...that one was almost not worth it. It is a cool story to tell... but I don't need to test that [limits]. Having the confidence is fine. I don't need the proof.” (61:27–62:03)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "No explanation, nothing." (01:52, Brett Grimes)
• "We don't know. But if we find anything strange, get it out of the hole as fast as possible, and then we're going to hand it off..." (01:43–02:31, Brett Grimes)
• "You start to get to the point where, like, is this on purpose? Are they busy and they're just wanting to get after it? Or are they just trying to get me into work mode and just have me stop asking questions?" (12:32–13:03, Brett Grimes)
• "What if they kick us in the fucking hole?" (21:21, Brett Grimes)
• "She hands me this book… it's a book on Mount Shasta...and it says Saint Germain. I start reading...and that's when the word 'cult' popped into my head." (24:46–27:31, Brett Grimes)
• "We are in the COVID of darkness. They did not call the other guys...They're using my truck. And the goal is to get that shit down as fast as we can." (49:02–49:45, Brett Grimes)
• "And now it’s just like, is there going to be repercussion for what I just did?" (55:35–55:49, Brett Grimes)
• "Trust my gut. I had been telling myself to leave..." (61:03–61:27, Brett Grimes)
• "I have this belief in myself that I can live through anything, but I don’t need to test that." (61:27–62:03, Brett Grimes)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Brett’s Introduction & Job Offer: 05:12–07:09
• First Arrival & Red Flags: 07:48–10:02
• First Day Digging: 10:05–14:26
• Questioning the Purpose & Secrecy: 14:26–21:11
• Escalating Paranoia: 21:21–24:46
• Mount Shasta Cult Legends: 24:46–32:09
• Final Days of Tension & Extraction: 38:29–46:19
• The Final Night – Secret Removal: 47:46–55:35
• Brett’s Reflections: 61:03–62:12

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Overall Tone and Takeaway

Engaging and conversational, Brett’s storytelling is candid, self-effacing, and alternately funny, suspenseful, and chilling. The episode immerses listeners in the mounting weirdness and latent danger of an apparently simple job gone deeply sideways. Both host and guest leave the mystery open-ended, with Brett’s lived experience as both a cautionary tale and a testament to human curiosity and resilience.

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Transcript

[Hayden]

Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fan Girls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

[Stephen]

And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the Smash Daddy.

[Hayden]

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

[Stephen]

That's right.

[Brett Grimes]

Hey. Hey.

[Stephen]

So each week, you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.

[Hayden]

And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler Al. He'll be wrong.

[Stephen]

News flash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy Fan fellows wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Brett Grimes]

Subaru. I eventually asked like, okay, what are we looking for? And the demeanor changed a bit on the crew when I asked that question. And I was told, we don't know, but if we find anything strange, get it out of the hole as fast as possible, and then we're going to hand it off to the guy who's actually running this. But every time we found something, we would pull it out of the hole. And the rule was, instantly, everyone faces away. And so it was like when we first found the first few things, that's when it really started kicking in. Like, why are we doing it this way? And it was no every time. And it was just, all right, back to work. No explanation, nothing.

[Julian Morgans]

Hey, I'm Julian Morgans, and you're listening to what it was like. The show that asks people who have lived through big dramatic events what it was like. Hey, did you ever read the book Holes? Or maybe you saw the movie? There was a movie. It came out in 2003, I think. It's about a kid who gets sent to camp, and he's made to dig holes all day long as punishment. I think he stole something, but he never gets told why they're digging holes. Well, somehow that story kind of exists in real life. Today's episode is one of those cases where life has really imitated art. Today I'm speaking with a guy named Brett Grimes, who, back in 2009, got a job that he found on a notice board. The job was to dig a hole on the side of an ancient volcano called Mount Shasta. It's in northern California. And there was no explanation about what they were doing. No clear purpose, just instructions. Dig, and if you find anything unusual, please report it. And what followed was weeks of dangerous, increasingly hard work surrounded by people that he didn't trust in a situation that seemed to just get weirder and weirder. And you know what? I love stories like this. I love just a good, solid mystery. And I also love the way that my guest isn't a celebrity. He's not an expert. But Brett is a blue collar worker living in Montana. But he's here to tell us an unbelievable story about something that happened to him. And he tells it like the funniest, most poignant guy that you've ever met in a bar. And everything that you're gonna hear today is all real now. I first came across Brett's story via a documentary by filmmaker Elijah Sullivan. The film's called the whole story. It's like an indie documentary, and if you can get a chance to see it, I highly recommend it. It recently screened at Slamdance, and I'll actually be speaking with El this week's subscriber only episode about how he found this story and how he found Brett. But for now, let's do it. Here is Brett Grimes to tell us about this very weird, mysterious job that he took and what they finally found at the bottom of the hole.

[Brett Grimes]

Hey, Brett.

[Julian Morgans]

Welcome to the show.

[Brett Grimes]

Hey, how's it going?

[Julian Morgans]

It's going very well. How are you doing?

[Brett Grimes]

Not too bad, not too bad. Just got off work. It's been a good day.

[Julian Morgans]

That's very good. Let's start with your backstory. Tell me a little bit about where you grew up and just, like, who you are, really.

[Brett Grimes]

I grew up in a small town up in the mountains in Southern Oregon, Climate Falls. Everyone's dads worked together in the mill or trying to get out of town pretty much. But small place. My whole childhood growing up in Southern Oregon. I went to Mount Shasta Elementary. I could see the mountain no matter where I was, but always been into the outdoors. Skateboarding. Still skateboarding this day, since I was eight years old. When I was 20, joined the military. Was in the army for four years. Came back, trying to find somewhere to kind of make this. This final home, because I had a buddy that had moved to Montana, and he's like, you got to come up here. You got to check it out. And I ended up going to Montana. I stayed in a hammock up by Ashley Lake for a week. Absolutely fell in love with it. Then saved up every dime I had and moved my family up here and been in Montana ever since.

[Julian Morgans]

That's cool, man. That's great. So let's go back in time for a minute. What was happening for you in 2009?

[Brett Grimes]

2009 was a rough year. It's kind of hard after I go back. I know. I believe I was 19 back then. There was a big recession in 2008 here, and just constantly trying to pick up odd jobs and anything I could, I could get into. And at that time in my life, too, I was on my own, and I was just trying to kind of find my spot. I was checking message boards for jobs, and back then, it was an MSN message board for jobs, and I saw one that said, looking for a hand to build a fence line on Mount Shasta. And, I mean, I can do almost anything with my hands. And so I'm like, easy money. Okay. So I called him up, and a guy answered, and he asked if I was interested and if I had my own tools, my own boots, my own truck, all that. And I said, yeah. And he told me to drive up there, and he was going to hook me up with his job. So I put the last, you know, 60 bucks in my gas tank, and I drove up the mountain on that

[Julian Morgans]

call, what sort of an impression did you get? Did anything seem off about the call?

[Brett Grimes]

No, not really. I mean, the guy I spoke to sounded exactly like, you know, the 20, 30 guys I had worked for before that. You know, it was directly to the point. No, no. No red flags in my head whatsoever at that point.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay, so you put the last of your money into your fuel tank, and you went for a drive.

[Brett Grimes]

Yep.

[Julian Morgans]

Walk me through it.

[Brett Grimes]

So where I was currently living was about 45 minutes from Mount Shasta. So I told my mom I, I picked up a job in Mount Shasta and that was kind of it. I didn't tell her where I was going there. I really just jumped at the opportunity to make some money at the time. Yeah. Yeah.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay. And do you want to just set up the location for me? What does Mount Shasta look like? What does the forest look like?

[Brett Grimes]

There's not a lot that compares to it. It's very thick wilderness. The mountain itself is, it is a behemoth. It feels very remote even though it's off of i5, which is a main interstate on the west coast here. I'm a backpacker and so I've been way, way far out there. And there are moments where it feels like you have stepped back in time a million years where everything is larger than you and you just kind of feel insignificant. It's really cool to be a part of. And there's a lot of horror movies that have been filmed up there.

[Julian Morgans]

Well, that is some spooky context, my friend. Tell me, tell me about your solo journey up to Mount Shasta.

[Brett Grimes]

Honestly, I was, I was excited. That drive, like you're just going deeper and deeper into the wilderness and it's gorgeous. I mean, you just pull off of the highway and you just end up in this quaint little mountain town and everything's really rustic looking and it just, it's awesome.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay. And then I understand you stayed in a hotel or a motel. Can you tell me about that?

[Brett Grimes]

That, you know, it's funny is I didn't really have a reason to be suspicious, but that's where like the first little bit of it kicked in. You know, it was a small two story, I believe U shaped motel. And I, you know, I rolled in and the guy that I'd spoke to on the phone was there and he had just gotten out of prison. Kind of caught me off guard a little bit because, I mean, he had the, you know, shaved head, Nazi tattoos, young guy, basketball shorts, wife beater, white tank top and long white socks. He was, he was wearing the white person, gang affiliated look. So it was kind of like, okay, I'm up here by myself. But he was, he was really cool. You know, at that point, I mean, it's work. You get, you can't. I've worked with people of all walks of life, so I kind of let that go. But he shook my hand, I got my room key and I went and got in my room and I kind of sat down and kind of did this for a Little bit. And was like, okay, well, I've committed. You know, I'm here now. Didn't do a whole lot of sleeping. You know, I kind of was. Was excited about the next day. You know, it's. I wanted to show up and work my ass off and prove that I deserve to be there.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay, and so what happens the next day?

[Brett Grimes]

So I woke up the next day, I grabbed what tools I had and threw my gloves in my back pocket, strapped my boots on, walked outside. And I remember there being an old van, and, you know, a handful of guys stand around it wearing torn car hearts and work boots. And so I walked up and they all turned around and looked at me, and I'm like, hey, hey, I'm Brett. I'm the new guy. And I just kind of fell in where I fit in, hopped in the van, and we started making our way up the mountain. I could definitely tell those guys have been working there for a while. They all knew each other. They all, you know, were kind of inside, joking, flicking each other a little bit. And I'm just sitting in the back and taking in the sights. And we were driving for a bit, and I start really looking. And I'm looking and I'm like, like, where are we turning at? I mean, you think fence line, you automatically think property. And you think property, you think maybe there's a house, you know, something there, and I'm not seeing it anywhere. And eventually we had pulled over on the side of the road. There's just this little trail right there. And so, you know, I'm staying quiet and I'm just kind of observing. And the other guys are getting out like it's no big deal. And I followed out behind them. We got in a single file line and started going down that trail. No tools, no rock bars, no fence post, hole diggers, nothing. We're not care. I started to think maybe they had left their stuff where they ended at. But growing up working in the woods like that, you don't do that. Like that shit's gone overnight. And as we're walking up, I finally spoke up and I'm like, hey, guys, where's the damn fence line? And everyone laughed. And I kind of froze a little bit because I was the younger guy by at least 10 years, the skinhead guy, who I always refer to as the crew lead. I think he was like 28, 29, but besides him, everyone was in their mid-30s or older. And one of the older guys spoke up, and he just goes, they told you a fence line, huh? And I'm like, yeah. And another guy spoke up, and he's like, hey, they told me a barn. And another guy spoke up, and he said, yeah, they told me we're building this. And instantly I start, like, getting a bit defensive, and I'm about to kind of put the brakes on. And that's when we got to the end of the trail, and the trail opened up, and there is a massive hole in the ground. And I can't give you an exact number. I believe we were past 20ft, but it was alarming. And the weird thing is, is site preparation, too. Like, when you get ready to do something big like that, you're going to level your spot where you have all this workspace. I mean, the mountain was like this, and that shaft was straight up and down, and the only trees missing were where that hole was. And so what are we doing here? And the crew lead comes over to me and he's like, hey, so these guys already have experience digging this, so you're going to be pulling buckets. Are you okay with that? And I said, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I walk up to the rim of the hole, and I look up, and there's a cable going tree to tree across the top of the hole with a pulley in the center of it and a line going straight down. I pulled maybe two buckets of dirt out of there, and I finally stopped. And I'm like, do you guys have a. Like, a loose length of rope? And they're like, why? And I'm like, I want to tie myself to this tree. Like, if I pull too hard and go forward and I take a header in there, I'm not getting out. And they were like, oh, yeah, no one's ever asked that before. And threw me a piece of rope, and I start pulling this, and I'm just like, no one is giving me an explanation. And it's. You know, you start to get to the point where, like, is this on purpose? Like, are they. Are they busy and they're just wanting to get after it? Or are they just trying to get me into work mode and just have me stop asking questions? And that's what I did. I instantly turned it into a goal. Like, how many buckets can I pull up in a half hour? Multiply that to an hour. Like, what can I do? And I kind of. It slipped from my mind at the time, and it was just like, hey, this is what we're doing. You know, the idea of it being illegal had not even came into my mind at all at that point. It's extremely illegal to do something like that. So you would automatically assume that no one's that stupid to send this many guys up there to, to do this to mine on federal land if they don't have their permits in line. And I thought it was a bit obvious. And we're parking on the side of the road and hiking up and we're leaving that van down there, like, so the idea of it being illegal hadn't crossed my mind yet. It was just weird and strange.

[Julian Morgans]

So. So at what point did you ask, what are we doing?

[Brett Grimes]

I think it had been a couple of days. And the reason being was I was catching praise. And I had a really hard upbringing. I was supposed to bear everything, protect my siblings. And my dad was, was kind of a hellion, you know, he was kind of an outlaw. So I always had this thing. I just, I couldn't let anyone down. Can't let anyone down. So the first couple of days, it was just like, I'm gonna work my ass off. And they're like, they're saying it like, young bucks got it. The young kids got it. Like, he's doing, you know, he's kicking ass up there. And then they were making fun of the older guys, like, that young kid's kicking your ass. And I'm like, hell yeah, I am. You know, like. And it was, it was a couple of days into that, and then I eventually asked, like, okay, we pulled a bunch of material out of here. What are we looking for? And the demeanor changed a bit on the crew when I asked that question. And I was told, we don't know. But if we find anything strange, get it out of the hole as fast as possible. And then we're going to hand it off to the guy who's actually running this. His name was Joseph and he is who was paying us. And he, Joseph wore a suit every day, leather shoes, like flat soled leather shoes, a nice suit. He was an older guy, I'm guessing mid to late 50s. And he had a guy with him named Koki who dressed just like we did, very blue collar, flannel, jeans, boots. And he was a geologist. All I know is that he was in the Navy. But every time we found something, we would pull it out of the hole. And the rule was instantly, everyone faces away. And so it was like when we first found the first few things, that's when it really started kicking in. Like, why are we doing it this way? So we'd face the opposite direction and they would pass those rocks off to Koki. And he would split those rocks, and he'd give the yay or the nay yes or no. And it was no every time. And it was just, all right, back to work. No explanation, nothing. And people were getting aggravated by me asking that question, like, and honestly, like, I'm a super curious guy. Like, I'm working my ass off out here. Like, we're obviously looking for something. So I wanted to know. But that answer, I never got that answer. And it was just kind of like, well, if you find something, bring it out of the hole. Let us see it. You guys face away. We'll crack it. We'll let you know. And I said, okay. And that happened. It happened a few times in the beginning, but it really started to happen at the very end. But, yeah, boulders. Pulling these boulders out. And most of them were about basketball sized, some to, like, medicine ball size. You know, they were hard, hard to get out of there because we were. We were taking depth. I mean, we were really chugging forward. We're getting deeper and deeper. So every time we got to the point where I would hear one of the voices from the hole yell up, hey, we got something. And they would let me know whether or not it could fit in the bucket, because it could fit in the bucket like young kids getting it out. So. And it got to the point where guys were putting boulders on their shoulders and climbing up multiple ladders and then climbing a chain on top of a boulder just to get out of the hole. But Joseph, yeah, it was. He kept everything secretive, didn't speak a lot. Had a caring, older guy voice to him. Out of all people, he should have made me uncomfortable, and he didn't. He was. He was a nice guy, but he was very stressed the entire time. You know, you could tell that he had a task on his shoulders and that he had to one way or another get this done. And he was oblivious. One of the reasons why I became kind of an asset on that crew is because my background in trail work, I had spent a long time out in the woods not being able to use power tools. You know, there are laws when you start doing work that deep in the woods. We use crosscut saws, you know, the old school saws for dropping trees. You know, we did stuff like that. Well, I spoke up one day because I kept looking at that boulder. I'd pulled dirt out of the hole, dump the buckets and the bucket back down. And I had a little bit of downtime to sit and look around. And I would stare at that boulder every day because I could tell by looking at it, they had gone down in depth, hit the boulder in the very beginning of this process. And then they had shifted the hole and then gone down from there. So I kept thinking like, why? Why would you shift? And finally I spoke up. I'm like, why didn't you split the rock? And they're like, we can't. I'm like, what do you mean you can't split it? They're like, well, we tried to jackhammer it. I'm like, that's not gonna work. And so it gets quiet. They're like, why? And I'm like, because you have to put a hole in it and split it from the inside. And so they're like, okay, like, how do you do that? And I'm like, well, leaves and feathers. Leaves and feathers are the really, really old way of splitting boulders. And it's these like upside down l shaped rods. And so you'd put one in a hole this way, one in a hole this way. And then you would drive a spike through the center, which would create that tension. With enough holes across it, you would crack from hole to hole to hole and split the boulder. And it's not easy work, but it's not exactly rocket science either. So I was kind of looking at these guys like, you've been out here for a while, like, split it. And so Joseph had pulled me aside and was like, if we run into any of these issues and you have a solution, I need you to speak up. And I'm like, okay. And when I would, he would just literally pull his credit card out and hold it in his hand like, let's go back to town. And he'd walk down the trail holding this card in his hand. And I got to the point where I was taking my truck up there. And he'd hop in my truck with me, my, my dirty, beat up old Chevrolet in his nice suit. And we'd go to town and we'd hit one of the hardware stores or something like that. And he would just stand behind me holding this card. And I, me at 19 years old, I'm like, we need this, we need this, we need this. And he would just wait for his moment, slide that card, and he'd be like, whatever the kid says, you know, they were, they were that desperate. They didn't know how to get what they were looking for, but they absolutely had to get whatever it was.

[Julian Morgans]

Wow. Did all of this secrecy and high pressure on Joseph make you feel nervous? Like, what, what did you think about

[Brett Grimes]

all this growing up? The way I did, you know, legal was a gray area. You grow up in the middle of nowhere in small towns. And, you know, Australia has a lot of secluded places as well. You know, you kind of do your own thing. And so having a little bit of elasticity when it comes to legality of things, like, I was like, it didn't stress me out at the time. I just didn't, like, they wouldn't fill me in, you know, and having worked on crews that had crew leads, crew bosses, stuff like that, like, I knew there was a hierarchy of things, and I was absolutely at the bottom. But to avoid the conversation constantly, that's. That's the first thing that was putting a red flag in my. In my mind. That was. It was kind of setting the alarm bells off. Yeah.

[Julian Morgans]

Were you worried that with all this secrecy around, if you did find something that they were looking for, what were they going to do with all the witnesses?

[Brett Grimes]

That didn't cross my mind until about the last two weeks. And I wasn't the only one. The older guys were the first ones to kind of speak up on it because people started bringing guns with them. The guys that I later on found out lived in that area were actually hiking up in the mornings beforehand and stashing guns in the woods. And I remember, like, yeah, okay. Like, it does definitely feel a little weird. This has gone on long enough with the secrecy that something's definitely not right, but is it that bad? And one of the older guys turns to me and he's like, what. What happens when we find it? And I'm like, when we give it to him, and it's like, look what we've gone through. You know, they won't tell us anything. You think that's just going to end the moment we find what they're looking for? And I remember, like, thinking about it as I'm walking, and then it just clicked. I mean, like, being splashed with cold water. And it's, what if they kick us in the fucking hole? You know, I thought about it, too. I was like, all of us out here, we. There's no problem with us overwhelming these two. They're two older guys, obviously, are not, you know, cut from the cloth that we are from being raised in places like this. So that's what was in my head is like, well, there's. We have numbers, you know, we have numbers, like, see him try it. And then once it kicked in, that all of us would be facing the hole when those shouts came up and when those guys were trying to get whatever it was out, we would all be facing the hole, getting ready to take rocks. You know, like, do you need help? Constantly communicating back and forth. Like we'd be facing the hole and I don't care how old you are, if you put a boot in my back when I'm on the edge of a 63 foot hole, that's it. I'm not going to be able to turn around and grab the ledge. This isn't the movies. Like you're taking a header and you're not coming out. So once that conversation happened and I had that moment, that's when everything became extremely real. Wasn't funny. It wasn't, you know, this, this, this immense adventure and curiosity kind of, that, that instantly went. And then it was kind of like a. No one knows I'm here. These guys, these guys who I actually don't know, you know, I, I could say I do. You know, at the time I knew their names, but I don't know these guys. And more than half of them seemed like they had done some time. A couple of them visually had the look of drug use, bad drug use. All of them were drunks. And from being, being raised around people like that, you know, if you don't know them, those people can write you off like that, you know, if it's you over them. And so then you start thinking like, if something happens to me, these guys are scattering and they're not going to the cops. And so I kind of realized I am on my own now. This crew thing doesn't matter. You know, I'm. I'm a stranger here. I'm the only one from out of town. And so that's when it really, it really hit me that I am on my own out here and there's a high chance of danger. And I have blindly walked myself into a situation that is now severely difficult to get out of if I need to.

[Julian Morgans]

Wow. Were you talking to anyone about this? Did you tell your parents? Did you tell any friends? I mean, you're going back to civilization, staying in this motel every night. Are you talking not civilization?

[Brett Grimes]

You know, I wouldn't say that. That town only has a couple of roads that are not residential. A couple. It's, it's mainly just one main strip that goes through the town. So even then I only remember really coming back to town one time during the entire process of digging that hole. I was excited, you know, like, yeah, it was sketchy at the time, but I was like. As soon as I had made it back to Reading and met up with my Friends. And we went and got some beers and we're sitting on my buddy's front porch of his apartment complex and I'm like, so excited to tell him, like, dude, I've been doing this and it's kind of crazy, you know, like, they won't tell us what we're doing. And as I'm going through it, I kind of look up my friends faces and they're like, you're not going back, right? And I'm like, yeah, I got to be there by Monday. And they're like, maybe you. Maybe you stay. And I'm like, no, dude, like, we gotta be getting close to being done. And it's actually that moment is when I found out what at the time I believed was the motivation for the entire thing. The area I was at, where that apartment complex was, is directly next to the skate park in that town. And it's very low income, trashy apartments. Most of my buddies got there when they got out of high school. That's where their first apartments and stuff. And I remember upstairs, above me, I can hear footsteps moving around. And this door opens behind me and this. This woman who had probably been up for a couple days comes out holding this book. And she's like, hey, I don't mean to like, interrupt. I was totally eavesdropping, but I think I know what you're talking about. And I'm like, okay. And she hands me this book. It's a book on Mount Shasta. And the. The page is open to the beginning of a chapter and it says Saint Germain. I start reading through it, and that's when I found out about the IM cult organization and the whole legend of St. Germain. My understanding of it is in the mid-1900s, a miner was up on Mount Shasta digging, and he took his weekend and just went for like a leisurely stroll. And he got lost, didn't have any water. And he runs into this extremely tall, like, majestic being named Jermaine. And Jermaine allowed him to drink from a stream, from his chalice, and then took him inside the mountain. And he showed him all the Lemurian sites and the golden domes and the ancient city that's supposed to be inside the mountain. No one knows where the entrance is to it, and there's somewhere in there, it's like they might have dug their way in. And I'm sitting here, like, reading this and I'm just like, holy. And it gets to the point where, like, you start reading more and more about the I Am foundation and how secretive they are. And they own pieces of the mountain. They won't let people up there. And that's when the word cult popped into my head.

[Julian Morgans]

Hey, we're going to take a quick ad break, but stick around because we'll be back with more what it was like. Now, I think at some point, most of us have had the thought I should get a therapist. And then a lot of us don't. Not because of any stigma or actually think we're moving past that, but just because getting started feels hard. Certainly that was my experience. Between figuring out insurance and finding the right therapist, it just felt like a lot of effort. But I gotta say, Ruler makes getting started really easy. They partner with over 100 insurance plans, so the chances are that they probably take yours, which brings the average cost of a session down to around $15. And that's because you're using the benefits that you're already paying for. And they match you with a therapist who specializes in what you're dealing with. So there's no searching for the right therapist, there's no getting on a wait list. It all just works. Thousands of people are already using Ruler to get affordable, high quality therapy that's actually covered by insurance. So visit ruler.com waslike to get started, and after you sign up, you'll be asked how you heard about them. So please support the show and let them know that we sent you. That's ruler. R u l a.com waslike because you deserve mental health care that works with you and not against your budget.

[Hayden]

Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan. Fellas, I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

[Stephen]

And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy.

[Hayden]

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

[Stephen]

That's right.

[Brett Grimes]

Hey.

[Stephen]

Hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.

[Hayden]

And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.

[Stephen]

News flash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy fan fellows wherever you get your podcasts.

[Bleacher Report Ad Voice]

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[Brett Grimes]

I can't lie and say like it did make it a little bit more exciting, but it also just added this whole other chapter to it where it's like, how culty are these people? You know, there's a lot of hippies in Northern California that are really, really into certain things and religions and stuff and they're harmless. They are weird, but harmless. So then it was like when I go back, I got to figure out how harmless are these people. But by the time I came back, like that's when everything really turned. That's when the conversation about bringing guns up there happened. The possibility of them trying to get rid of us when we were done. And yeah, just the look on my friends faces too because I thought they'd be on board like, oh dude, that's a crazy adventure. And you know, like we're all a bunch of 19 year old skate punks. I think actually I had a big mohawk at that time. And, and for those, that, that group of people to be that concerned about me, like I debated not going back and trying to think of the reason I went back. You know, I did not want to be the first guy to quit. And that was my dad's thing growing up. Like my dad did a lot of things wrong, but there were a few things that he would not bend on. And if my dad found out I gave someone my word and went back on it, my dad would have chastised me and not spoken to me for a long time. Like that's, that's how deep that moral runs through my family.

[Julian Morgans]

Wow.

[Brett Grimes]

And so I didn't want to quit. I had given someone my word that I was going to see this through. So I went back o just back

[Julian Morgans]

to this cult thing with this lost civilization inside the volcano.

[Brett Grimes]

Yeah.

[Julian Morgans]

What Were these basketball rocks supposed to be in relation to that?

[Brett Grimes]

No idea. No idea. That was still the one question. It was, okay, maybe I have motive now, maybe I know what their motive is. But I still don't know what the end goal is besides one thing which is proving that their religion or their cause is true. Inside their little world of Mount Shasta, there's plenty of believers and there's people that come from all over the world up there to go check it out. But the total population of humans, like that's a small, small group. But I saw these, these rocks, I saw them and I've seen them split open like there was no way I wasn't going to look. You know, like, the other guys, they were smart enough to be like, well, the more I see, the more they know I know. But for me, like, I had to look. And it didn't look like anything I hadn't seen before. I've spent plenty of time digging in the ground up in the mountains and excavating and things like that. And they were, they were very light brown colored boulders. And when they were split, the inside was dark and it looked as though like someone had taken their hand and rubbed it in wood ash and then rub the center of that split boulder. That's what it looked like to me. And it's, it didn't seem like anything out of the ordinary at all. Wow.

[Julian Morgans]

So there were no crystals?

[Brett Grimes]

Not that I saw, no. And we should have seen it too, because being in that hole, I wish I would have taken pictures from the inside because it was mesmerizing. Once the sun got high enough and filled that hole full of light, there was an iron vein all the way up the side of it that they had chipped through to make that hole. I mean, and from working out there in the dirt, you know, if you see iron and then you see quartz, you might see gold. And so I remember looking at that iron vein, I'm like, there's, there's no quartz crystals in it. Like, the fuck are we doing out here? You know, like, and you know, you hit 60ft. This is something that I've actually thought about quite a bit because I've talked to, I have friends that are geologists, and I started asking them because there were years where I thought no one knew what had happened. And I started kind of baiting him into conversation without telling him too much. But I'm like, are there big layers to Mount Shasta? Because Mount Shasta has erupted. And the moment I would say that every single one was like, absolutely the top of the mountain, all that dirt is fresh mountain. You know, you would have to dig really, really far down to get to the part of the mountain that is pre eruption. And they were. They would always nerd out on it because it's like we would never get a chance to actually look at it because no one's allowed to go and excavate the mountain. So no one really knows what's in those soil samples down there. And so I started thinking about it, and it was like, the only reason maybe they have us digging this deep is because whatever they're looking for is pre eruption, and which is still a possibility. I really don't know. But that. That kind of made sense to me.

[Julian Morgans]

That's cool. You know, I'm not sure how old Mount Shasta is as a volcano, but the idea that you just like chipping a hole through layers of time to get down to some much earlier age, you know, maybe tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, I don't know. But that's cool. Yeah, I actually. I wanted to know this before, but can you tell me about the very first time that you went down in the hole?

[Brett Grimes]

Wasn't what I expected. I did not expect it to be that cold. By the time I went down there, it was pretty close to the end, probably the last month. I was surprised those guys could get those boulders out, carrying them on their shoulders, because you go stand next to a tree and you step down and walk across the top of the boulder, the big one they had moved the hole for, and there was a chain around it, and you would come down this chain, and then you'd hit the top of another ladder. And so I'm like, and it's pretty dark in there, you know, because it really depended on later on in the day, you could really see in there. But in the morning, the sun, the angle of the sun wasn't getting to the bottom of the hole. So I would go down the ladders and kept thinking, man, am I almost there? Am I almost there? And then I get to the bottom and I jump down and it's cold and the air feels thin, claustrophobic. But I started thinking, how are you swinging pickaxes around each other constantly all day long without hitting each other? And then once the sun got high enough where the sunlight made it to the bottom of the hole, it would fill with bees. And so these guys were spending the first half of their day almost in darkness, barely able to see down there, cold, wearing sweatshirts, like, digging through clay and thick, dense earth. And iron veins. And then it's like, okay, the sun comes up all the way, it's warm and now you're dealing with bees. I was like, damn. You know, like, it's impressive. But once I got to the bottom and looked up, I couldn't grasp going any deeper because I knew that we were going to run into issues. Now my background was not in digging mine shafts. My background was kind of a jack of all trades for things out there. And knowing what I know now, like we didn't shore it. I don't know if you know what shoring is.

[Julian Morgans]

No.

[Brett Grimes]

So at least in the states, if you dig anything that's pretty much above your head, you know, depth wise, you have to start putting in man made walls in there, Right. What that does is it stops collapse, right? So if we're 60 plus feet with no shoring versus you're supposed to have shoring if it's above your head, you know, how do we not have a collapse if we go any deeper, are we gonna get a collapse? Like, what if they dig and they hit the edge of a rock and they have to dig into the wall to pull that rock out and that weakens the whole wall because then it's like if this thing caves and people die, what do I do? Like, do I run? You know, I didn't have my truck there every day. That was, that was eye opening. Because looking down into it's no big deal. Especially when you're focused on a bucket coming out of the hole every day. But getting in the bottom of that and looking straight up and realizing it just felt like it was going to go. And it should have. It absolutely should have.

[Julian Morgans]

Jeez.

[Brett Grimes]

Yeah.

[Julian Morgans]

So talk to me about the last week of digging this hole. You know, it sounds like the mood's getting tense and what's happening.

[Brett Grimes]

So at that point, the older guys were having their own conversations and at times were bringing me in. And the bringing me in part kind of came more and more as those last like week and a half, two weeks were going by. And there was talks about I ain't fucking coming back. And it's like, well, I don't know, man. I really need the money and if I'm coming, I'm gonna need a hand, man. I really need you. And we've gone this far. And so that was kind of half of what the crew was feeling. And then the other half was like, if we decide to keep doing this, we need to be all on the same page. And that if something happens, like we're Gonna fight as a group. Like, the fact that we were having conversations about fighting for our lives in the woods while still continuing to go to the job site makes no sense to me nowadays. But at the time, it was like, you know, in my impressionable mind, I'm like, yeah, that's a good plan. Absolutely.

[Julian Morgans]

And, you know, it's a terrible plan.

[Brett Grimes]

It's a terrible plan. Yeah. I don't advise it at all. The joking stopped. Quiet days. And I tried to just focus on just once again, just moving dirt, moving dirt, moving dirt. Joseph had brought his brother up there, and he was mentally disabled, also in his 50s, and a very unnerving, strange character. Slightly long hair, had the. The bird's nest. Balding in the top, hair around the side. And you could tell that Joseph had tried to dress him like he dressed himself. But he would show up with his blazer jacket off, shirt misbuttoned, and I. I'm not kidding. He would. We'd get there and he would step off, like, a couple feet into the woods, sit down, grab his knees, and rock back and forth and watch us. But the thing is, is guys are taking turns going down in the hole. I'm the only guy that's outside the hole every day. So I'm sitting there pulling, and you would just kind of look over, and this dude is just looking at me from the bushes, rocking back and forth. And when my buddy had came up, done those three days of work, and then got sent home, they put him in my hotel room.

[Julian Morgans]

My God.

[Brett Grimes]

And I remember coming back from the job site one day, going in there, and here is this man in his mid-50s, who I'd never heard speak a single word, was sitting on his bed, rocking back and forth in his underwear and his whitey tighties. And I stopped at the door and I'm just like, okay, that's red flag danger issue number like 100. Like. And so now I'm having conversations with myself. Like, I can. There's a voice in my head that's telling me to leave, leave, leave. And I did, whether it was pride or whatever. And I'm like, we have to be close to the end. Like, stick it through. Work your ass off and take these people's money. Go in there, do the best you can. Let's get this money and let's go home. This is going to be over with. And I rode that until the last two days. The last two days, that voice was hard to calm.

[Julian Morgans]

Just really quickly, I've got to ask, how much were you being paid

[Brett Grimes]

I think I was getting 20 days per diem. It was over a hundred a day. But at that time, I'd been working minimum wage jobs.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay.

[Brett Grimes]

So the fact that they were just giving me a place to stay, so I wasn't paying rent. They were giving me money to eat off of, and I was catching a paycheck, so I had zero expenses. They were giving me gas, you know, and as a kid, that's not grown up wealthy. I'm on my own, I'm making a living, I'm doing fine. They're paying me in cash, which at that point was like, I don't gotta go to the bank. Should have been another red flag that they were refusing to write checks to me. But the pay wasn't bad.

[Julian Morgans]

It sounds like financially it was a good deal. But I mean, I guess I'm just wondering, like this, as you said, red flag number 100. Like, that's a lot of red flags. You just. And you just persisted with this.

[Brett Grimes]

Yeah, yeah, I'm very stubborn and you're very tenacious.

[Julian Morgans]

Thank you.

[Brett Grimes]

That's a good way of putting it. I'll. There's a few women that might correct you on that one, but. But yeah.

[Julian Morgans]

So talk to me about the. The last couple of days.

[Brett Grimes]

The last two days. That's when every hour I was having this conversation with myself on should I leave? And if I make that decision, how do I go about it? Do I leave in the middle of the night? And then that voice would be like, why would you have to leave in the middle of the night? Like, just, just leave. I kept telling myself, one more day, feel it out if it gets any worse. Which is a horrible mindset to have. If it gets any worse, I'll take off. The rougher guys in the crew that usually kept their cool were now stone silent, didn't say anything. There were guys that were already there as I was hiking up the trail in the morning, which means those are the guys that were stashing guns in the woods. And then the last day, I remember we had worked most of the day, and that's when we had found something. We had found the final it. And I remember we pulled a lot of boulders out of the hole constantly, over and over again, from small basketballs all the way to medicine ball size. And it was just a huge stack that we had built. And then they told us to go home. And I'm like, we don't quit early for nothing. Like, we've had hard days out here and we always see it through. And now they're sending us home. So in my mind, I'm like, we found it. It's over. And I'm sitting in my hotel room afterwards. The sun's going down. I'm laying on my bed with my bag packed, fully dressed, and I'm just staring at the ceiling. And I'm like, why are you waiting for a phone call? Like, why are you waiting for. Do we work tomorrow? And I remember I'm getting to the point where I'm almost forcing myself to sit up and leave. Like, I'll drop the key at the front desk or something, but, like, I can just go. And time's flying, and I'm, like, starting to plan how. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna leave tonight or maybe leave in the morning. Going back and forth. And then my phone rings. And so, I mean, it was long time ago. Pop my little flip phone, and I'm like, hey, what's going on? And it's the crew lead, and it's not Joseph. So I was more open to answer this phone call. I had spent enough time with this guy. And although he had this really shady, racist prison background, he came across as a guy that was very intelligent and got put in that situation. And we. I'm a big reader, and we would just talk about authors and books. And he'd read more books than I had, which is one of the only people at that time I knew. And we bonded over that. So when he called me, I'm getting ready to be like, hey, man, I don't care how upset you're gonna be. I'm getting the out of here. Like, I have to go. And that's when he was like, listen, I just got the call from Joseph. And I remember, like, looking out the window, it's dark. I think at this point, it was like 11pm like, starting to get way later in the night. He goes, this is the deal. He wants me and you to hop in your truck. We're gonna go up there tonight, and we're gonna get all that material down. All those rocks are gonna come down. He's gonna pay us one lump sum to go up there. He's gonna give you 200 bucks, and we bring it all down, and we are done. And I think, because I finally got the D word, like, we are done. This is it. That I said, okay. And I shouldn't have done that. I should have listened to my gut. But because I had seen the end, the light at the end of the tunnel. This is it. I was like, let's let's fucking see it through.

[Julian Morgans]

Hey, we're going to take a quick ad break, but stick around because we'll be back with more what it was like.

[Hayden]

Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas, I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

[Stephen]

And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the Smash Daddy.

[Hayden]

And we are currently deep div Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Stephen here has not read Mistborn before.

[Stephen]

That's right.

[Brett Grimes]

Hey. Hey.

[Stephen]

So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.

[Hayden]

And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.

[Stephen]

News flash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts.

[Bleacher Report Ad Voice]

The Bleacher Report app is your destination for sports right now. The NBA is heating up, March Madness is here, and MLB is almost back. Every day there's a new headline, a new highlight, a new moment you've got to see for yourself. That's why I stay locked in with the Bleacher Report app. For me, it's about staying connected to my sports. I can follow the teams I care about, get real time scores, breaking news and highlights all in one place.

[Julian Morgans]

Place.

[Bleacher Report Ad Voice]

Download the Bleacher Report app today so you never miss a moment.

[Brett Grimes]

And we hopped in my truck and past midnight started going up the mountain.

[Julian Morgans]

Oh, just take me along.

[Brett Grimes]

Living out there, you have two options when you live in areas like that. You either have full loom, full illuminated night, large moon, and you can walk through the woods at night and see things. But when you don't have that, it is the darkest place you've ever been. Ever. I remember gripping the steering wheel and just being like, this is the last little bit. And like I'm trying to justify it. I'm like, you're not going to go do a full day's worth of work. This isn't a full shift. Go up there, get that shit in the truck, bring it down the mountain and leave. He was in the same mindset, but he wasn't speaking. He's very stoic. We drove up there and there was these big rubbermaid like 55 gallon trash cans. And I remember like looking at him and it was like, hey man, look, this isn't going to do it. Like, this is going to take us another day, probably, to bring all this down. And he's like, look, I've thought about it, and this is what we're going to do. And he starts taking his belt off. He's like, take your belt off. So I took my belt off, and he goes, we're going to lube our belts through the handle on each side. We're gonna put our arms through and put that belt on our shoulders. We'll stand on either side of this trash can and we'll run it down the trail.

[Julian Morgans]

Wow.

[Brett Grimes]

And I'm like, okay. I mean, yeah, that'll work. Like, that will work. As long as this bucket doesn't rip and our belts don't rip, like, we can do it. So we get up there, and the first couple runs was just seeing what we can carry. We would drop boulders in it and then loop up on our shoulders, pick it up off the ground. And it was like, he'd look at me like, do you have more? I'm like, I got a little more. I think I can do a little more. And so we dump another one in and give it another test. And when it got to the point we could barely lift it. He just looked me go, and boom. We just start hoofing it down the trail. And that's when all of this being illegal, like, I. I had kind of figured it out before, but now it's in front of my face. We are in the COVID of darkness. They did not call the other guys, mind you, who have been there longer than me, but are probably a little less trustworthy. They're not using their rigs. They're using my truck. And the goal is to get that shit down as fast as we can. And so I'm like, dude, if somebody drives by, like, that's it. Like, can I go to prison for this? Yeah. I don't know what the charges are. I don't know what they have done to secure this land. How did they find it? Did someone allow them to do this? But obviously not, because we're cutting corners that you would do to make sure no one knows what you're doing. And so we're rushing down this mountain, back and forth, lap after lap through this trail. We're bleeding sweat. When I could actually see light on him, you could see his whole face. You know, skinhead, head, neck, face is glistening. I am soaked in sweat. And it's just like, you know, that tenacity is like, keep your feet moving. Keep going. Don't think. Just follow your feet. Let's get it done. And by the time we brought the last trash can down, it was extremely hard. We couldn't drop the tailgate anymore. I couldn't drop it at all because we had stacked that high with boulders. And so now, not only are we worn out, but we're having to actually get underneath this thing and pick it up over the tailgate and drop it into the truck. And every time I could see my truck sitting, boom, Lower, lower. And by the time we were done, we hop in the truck, and neither one of us are talking. And the load was so heavy because I was driving an 89 Chevy back then, and it had the leaf springs in the back. And so I remember when we got in, I could hear those old leaf springs had flattened out, so I have zero suspension in the back of my truck. And we start going down, and I'm having to tap the brakes because at that time, I was too stupid to realize that I can shift into first on the. On the column and downshift an engine brake. And so I'm feathering the brake as I'm going down, trying not to hit the gas. And I can just feel every time my brakes are going in farther, farther. So I'm burning my brake pads, and I'm starting to get squeals. So I'm hitting my rotors now. Brake pads are gone. And luckily we got to the bottom, and I was able to level it out, and we're fine. And I. I turned to him, and I'm like, we are off the mountain. And he just goes like, I have a spot. And he goes like, I'm just going to give you lefts and rights, so take a left here. And I'm like, okay. And I'm driving now. I don't know really where we're going. And we pull up at this storage unit. So we pull in between these long sections of storage units, all the doors in them. We pull up. I remember lighting a cigarette and just being like, okay, hand this shit over and get out of here. And I look up and the sun's coming up, and I'm like, fuck, we just worked all night. To me, I mean, it was hard work, but it felt like we were there for an hour. Well, the sun's coming up now, and as, like, everything is sitting in, the adrenaline starting to come off. And then these 2U haul moving trucks pull up, and they back up towards my truck, and I don't remember if I saw anyone get out or not, but I remember the back of them opening, and they had already framed rock cradles on either side of the walkway. So it's these square boxes they had made out of wood. And each one was meant to cradle a single boulder. We loaded these things up, dropping rocks in each one of them, and within minutes, they were gone. Joseph's standing there, and I'm looking at him. You could tell he wanted to have a conversation with me. And he kind of. And like I said, like, through all of this, through how sketchy and weird and odd and secretive it was, I had this feeling that he was. Some part of him was a good man. And he had looked at me with this, like, grandfather eyes, like he was gonna, like, sit there and talk to me. And I could see his response to the look on my face. And he kind of stopped what he was about to say. It was just like, thank you. I appreciate this. Like, we'll be in touch. And I'm like, okay. You know, I don't remember saying goodbye to this, the crew lead, but I remember, like, getting in my truck and taking off. And I remember even being like, I have no idea if I need gas. I'm gonna catch gas a half hour from now if I need to fill up. Like, I just need to get out of Mount Shasta. I need to get as far away from the scene of the crime at this point. And I felt. I felt scared and relieved at the same time. With every mile that went by getting closer to home, the anxiety was lifting, you know? And I remember getting to the edge of my town and just, like, not listening to music. I hadn't turned the radio on. I had just my window down with my elbow on the window and my head kind of tilted into the wind. And I had just been thinking, and then I start kind of chuckling to myself. And then it's just like, you fucking idiot. Like, hey, we landed on our feet again. That's awesome. But, like, oh, my God. And I get home, I hadn't gone in the house yet, and I'm like, sitting on my mom's front porch. And it was just like this kind of a calm, peaceful feeling because what happened? I had adrenaline dumped, you know, And I had done it for hours and hours on end of not only the work, but all the what ifs running through my head and still to the fact that I didn't know where we were going to do the drop off. And I remember rolling up and being like, they allowed me off the mountain, so there might not be danger, but if there is danger, it's going to happen right now. Yeah. And luckily, like, that's when I kind of realized the danger part was done and I was going to walk out of here on my own two feet. And now it's just like, is there going to be repercussion for what I just did? Yeah.

[Julian Morgans]

Let's go back to the rocks for a minute because the big question in all of this is, what the hell were those rocks? Can you just tackle that question for me?

[Brett Grimes]

For the longest time, I. The only information that I knew was purely my experience. You know, like I had said, like, they weren't bringing me inside the loop that much. I started to think some type of mineral. Now, truth be told, the last bunch of rocks that they split, I did not see the inside of. I saw it more towards the beginning that the scattered few we had pulled out here and there. So there is a possibility that I have not seen exactly what we pulled out. Everything I brought down was still full, unsplit boulders.

[Julian Morgans]

Right.

[Brett Grimes]

So that's the golden question. I mean, this is what sucks too, is I'm still sitting here, you know, like I was 19 years old, I'm turning 37 in May, and I think about this all the time.

[Julian Morgans]

All the time.

[Brett Grimes]

Yeah. What if it was something harmful? What if it is not just something that's worth something? What if it is something that can be weaponized? What if it is toxic? What if it's a substance that there's a substance that's illegal enough to where people have to hide like this when they go find it outside of regulation? And the answer is, I just really don't know, you know, and it's kind of one of the reasons why I am on board with doing these interviews and speaking to people about it, because the world we live in now, the. The amateur crime solving that's going on. So I hope that somebody, you know, picks up the little leads that we have and runs with this, and I get to eventually, before I die, figure out what it was that I possibly risked my life for.

[Julian Morgans]

I mean, let's. Let's just throw some theories around for a minute so we can speculate that whatever it was was more valuable than what they spent. And they probably spent, I don't know, somewhere between 10 and $100,000. Yeah. So I mean, I'm thinking of, like, what crystals, like, are they called geodes? These sort of like volcanic spherical things and you split them open, they're full of crystals. I don't know what those things are worth yet. Crystals are not worth that much.

[Brett Grimes]

Yes, they are.

[Julian Morgans]

They are.

[Brett Grimes]

It's It's. It has to do with color, hue, and size. Okay. And the only reason I know that is because I'm from those areas. Geodes are big up there. Absolutely. But I've seen a shit ton of geodes, and you can kind of tell what you have. When you pull a geode out of the ground before you crack it, you can tell there's a good chance that there's something in it. I did not get that feeling from that whatsoever. Geodes, also, the larger they get, they tend to elongate a lot of the time instead of being perfectly spherical, which, although the texture on the outside of the boulders was very rough and pitted, no matter how big they were, all spherical. And so possible. There's another idea that it could be lava rock, cinder, and something that has been flowed over and encased in it, but you're not going to get perfect spheres. So uranium, that was a possibility, and I have zero experience with that. I mean, as far as I know, if you pull out raw uranium like that, like, we didn't have Geiger counters.

[Julian Morgans]

No.

[Brett Grimes]

And if that's what you're looking for, like a Geiger counter would be. I mean, you would be constantly sending that thing down in the hole as we would hit deeper and deeper depths just trying to pick up anything.

[Julian Morgans]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brett Grimes]

Seriously, relics, you know, if it was possible to find relics once again, why would they be encased in stone? But I remember Joseph getting phone calls constantly out at the hole, and he would step away from where we were working, and I remember watching him, like, look at his phone, and, mind you, like, standing waist deep, just in bushes in his suit, taking a deep breath, and he would answer the phone and he would sit and have this conversation, and it looked like he was, like he was getting chewed out. He was getting his ass chewed on the phone. And he would just have this reassuring voice like, you know, we're gonna figure it out. And he'd get off the phone, and I remember him, like, taking another deep breath and just being like, all right, fellas, keep going. And so there was this immense pressure on this man. And I don't remember how I found this out, but I do remember someone saying that Joseph was from Florida and that the person that was calling him on the phone was the leader of the organization or whoever they worked for, and it was his mother. And it kind of made sense with his demeanor of having the demanding mother, the way there's a strong female character in his life that was pushing him by just kind of the way he acted and carried himself. Yeah. I don't know, man. And it's gonna haunt me forever, you know?

[Julian Morgans]

So you may not have ever learned what the rocks were, but what did you learn about yourself and. And just generally? What did you learn?

[Brett Grimes]

Trust my gut. You know, I. I had been telling myself to leave, and I need to not let my emotions get ahead of me and have a clear mind. Majority of that now comes from I'm a father. You know, my son just had his ninth birthday, and the idea of my boy doing what I did rattles me to my core.

[Julian Morgans]

Yeah.

[Brett Grimes]

Not to be so trusting, to know the faults I have in my character. I mean, I have lived a pretty crazy life, and I'm happy I get to look back. And I have, you know, these chapters in my metaphorical book, but that one was almost not worth. It is a cool story to tell, and it's kind of crazy. And that I. I have this belief in myself that I can live through anything, but I don't need to test that. Yeah. Having the confidence is fine. I don't need the proof. Yeah.

[Julian Morgans]

Well, I am glad you are here and telling this story. You're a hell of a storyteller, really.

[Brett Grimes]

Thanks, man. I appreciate it.

[Julian Morgans]

Thanks so much for coming on the show, Brett. This has been wild.

[Brett Grimes]

I'm. I'm glad you've been awesome to talk to. It's nice meeting you.

[Julian Morgans]

And that was Brett telling the story of the hole. As you can probably tell, there are still a lot of unanswered questions, and the person best placed to dig into those questions is filmmaker Elijah Sullivan. He spent the last decade, actually 12 years investigating this story. He's the director of the whole story, which is a documentary that's just come out, and it's how I first heard about Brett in the first place. So in this week's subscriber episode, I'm going to sit down with Elijah to talk about what he uncovered after 12 years of digging into this mystery. I keep saying that it's literally. No pun intended. I just keep saying it because it seems easy. But anyway, the locals didn't want to talk to Elijah about this hole that they had up in the forest. The government didn't want to talk about it, even though they'd been investigating it. So Elijah is going to talk about all these roadblocks that he hit and his own take on why people were so reluctant to speak about this mystery. It's a very illuminating, very intriguing behavior of backstory, and it's all for our subscribers and for the rest of you. I'll see you next week. What It Was like is produced by Rachel Tuffery. This episode was edited by Ellie Dickey, who also does our research. Our cover art is by Rich Akers. Our theme music was produced by Jimmy Saunders, and this whole thing has been a super real production.

[Brett Grimes]

Foreign.

[Hayden]

Howdy ho and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

[Stephen]

And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the Smash Daddy.

[Hayden]

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Matt Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

[Stephen]

That's right.

[Brett Grimes]

Hey. Hey.

[Stephen]

So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.

[Hayden]

And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.

[Stephen]

News flash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy Fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts.

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