Oregon Siblings Terrorized by Bigfoot During Trampoline Campout

# Something in the Woods Near Camp Wilkerson Made This Oregon Woman's Childhood a Lot Less Innocent A recent interview making the rounds on YouTube features a Columbia County, Oregon native named Ellie sharing a childhood experience that still gives her chills to this day. The conversation, hosted by Jeremiah Byron over on the Bigfoot Society channel, dives deep into one of those encounters that sticks with a person for life, the kind that makes you question what really wanders through those dense Oregon woods after dark. Ellie's story takes place around 2014, back when she was just a kid growing up on a property way up on Apy, near Camp Wilkerson. If you know the area, you know it's the kind of place where the trees close in thick and the nearest neighbor is practically a distant memory. Her family had six to nine acres of their own, with the Nehalem River actually winding right through the yard. Picture the perfect Pacific Northwest childhood setting, complete with trampoline campouts on the edge of the property line where the yard gives way to deep woods. That's exactly where this story gets unsettling. Ellie and her siblings had fallen asleep on the trampoline one night, maybe 40 feet from the house, when something woke them up well past midnight. Pitch black. Crickets chirping. The usual soundtrack of a rural Oregon night. Then came the cracking sounds, followed by movement in the bushes just beyond the property line. Something dark was shifting around out there, close enough to see but impossible to identify. Then it started throwing things. Sticks and rocks came flying at the trampoline, hitting the safety net with enough force to make the kids freeze in terror. Ellie remembers the agonizing decision every person in that situation faces: do you bolt for the house, or do you stay put because whatever is out there clearly already knows exactly where you are? They chose silence. They chose to wait it out. And then came the part that might be the creepiest detail of all. Everything went completely silent. No crickets. No river sounds. Nothing. Just dead, oppressive quiet. Ellie's siblings swore they could hear slow, deep breathing coming from the woods, the kind of heavy, measured exhales that don't belong to any ordinary forest creature. When morning finally came, the kids went investigating. What they found only deepened the mystery. Palm-sized river rocks, smooth and hefty, were scattered around the trampoline. Arm-length sticks, thicker than a quarter in diameter, lay nearby. Ellie pointed out something fascinating about those rocks. The property was so heavily wooded that finding smooth, creek-polished stones of that size up on their land was genuinely strange. Where did they come from? What was carrying them? Ellie's parents weren't exactly rushing to investigate. They brushed it off as kids letting their imaginations run wild, though a family friend did crack the inevitable joke: "Was it Bigfoot?" That offhand comment stuck with Ellie in a way the adults probably didn't intend. Here's what makes this area so fascinating for anyone who follows these kinds of reports. Rainier, Oregon sits in Columbia County, a region with a long, long history of Sasquatch sightings and strange activity. Camp Wilkerson itself has been mentioned in numerous accounts over the years. Ellie even recalled that Bigfoot was a regular topic of conversation growing up there. During outdoor school, a gentleman actually came in and brought cast footprints for the kids to hold and examine. That's how embedded the subject is in the local culture. It's not some fringe topic in those parts. It's practically part of the folklore. Ellie mentioned she actually grew up outside Oregon, in California, before moving to the area. Coming from a state where Bigfoot was barely a whisper, the cultural shift of arriving in Columbia County and hearing these stories constantly, and then having a direct experience of her own, was a lot to process. The interview itself is worth checking out. Jeremiah Byron, who's been battling cancer and continues to put out content through his treatment, has a real gift for letting witnesses tell their stories without interruption. Ellie's account has that raw, genuine quality that makes it hit differently. She wasn't trying to prove anything. She was just a kid who got scared in the woods and never really got over it. For anyone interested in Pacific Northwest Sasquatch reports, Columbia County is one of those areas that keeps producing stories decade after decade. The combination of dense forest, remote properties, river systems, and a local culture that takes the subject seriously creates the perfect environment for encounters like Ellie's to happen and to be remembered. Definitely worth a listen if you're into firsthand witness accounts. Ellie's story about the breathing, the silence, and those mysteriously smooth river rocks has all the hallmarks of something that can't easily be explained away.