A US Army veteran turned Sasquatch hunter has spoken out about his terrifying encounter with ‘Bigfoot’ while camping on an abandoned logging road.
Electrician Kelly Stolp, 45, has been searching for a Sasquatch ever since he heard one screaming in Washington’s Gifford Pinchot National Forest four summers ago.
Stolp, an avid outdoorsman from Montana, has encountered plenty of wild animals, but nothing like what he saw on the night of July 17, 2020.
He was camping with his two sons and nephew, along with an old Army buddy, Mike Palagi, and his fiancée, when they experienced what he calls “the founding incident.”
Stolp said it was around 3 a.m. when they were awakened by the yeti-like scream. “It sounded like a washboard sound, like a brat-tat-tat, but it was very guttural,” he said. Oregon Live.
A US Army veteran turned Sasquatch hunter has spoken out about his terrifying encounter with ‘Bigfoot’ while camping off an abandoned logging road.
Kelly Stolp, 45, has been searching for a Sasquatch ever since she heard one screaming in Washington’s Gifford Pinchot National Forest four summers ago.
“I don’t know if I thought of Sasquatch,” he added. “I thought of fear.”
Stolp grabbed his shotgun and shouted to his campmates, but they had finished a bottle of Pendleton whiskey and did not wake up immediately.
The following night, at approximately the same time, the experience was repeated.
“The next night, let’s say I was outside of Pendleton,” Palagi, 38, told Oregon Live. “So I heard the croaking. It sounded like it was coming from an elevated location, not at ground level.”
Palagi’s fiancée, Olivia Corbin, also said she heard the noise. “It sounded like he was running past our heads,” she said. “It was like he was moving really loud. We could feel the ground moving as he walked past the store.”
The two Army veterans left the tent to explore the area, and Palagi admitted they were “very scared.”
“It was very, very dark, but you could still hear the noise, the noise, the noise, the noise. It wasn’t a four-legged animal, it was a two-legged thing,” he told Oregon Live.
And then it was gone as quickly as it had arrived.
Stolp said he only told the incident to his wife and a small circle of close friends because he didn’t want people to think he was crazy.
One of his confidants was Tanner Hoskins, 31, who wanted to get to the bottom of the mysterious experience.
In August 2020, they ventured back to the site of the sighting, but the Bigfoot did not return.
Electrician Kelly Stolp, 45, has been searching for a Sasquatch ever since he heard one screaming in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest (pictured), Washington, four summers ago.
Tanner Hoskins, 31, joined his friend Stolp’s quest to find Bigfoot after the disturbing 2020 sighting
Determined to find out more, Hoskins launched a website called Pacific Northwest Bigfoot Search to crowdsource more information.
“We started getting reports almost immediately,” Hoskins told Oregon Live.
A sheriff’s deputy reported hearing an identical sound near Saddle Mountain in northwest Oregon, while another camper said he saw a furry, two-legged creature outside Vernonia.
The website was filled with more than 100 reports of otherworldly images and sounds.
“In some ways, it brought the magic back into my life,” Stolp said of the 2020 encounter that sparked her quest.
“The mystery is back, because it didn’t exist before. It’s like being a child again.”
According to the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, Washington, with 713 total sightings, tops the list for the most Bigfoot reports. California was the next most common state with 461 and Florida was third with 339.