By Russ Burrows

A friend of mine has a story that never fails to scare the hell out of us. It happened to him several years ago, just after he had graduated from high school. {He's 30 now} At that point in his life he was a basically a good kid, but was angry about some things that had happened in the past. One of the things that he was most outspoken about was his dislike of the church, which he saw as hypocritical and manipulative. His family life was not good at that time either.

One night after he had gone to bed, he found himself awake in the early morning hours. The house was pitch black and silent. He opened his eyes and looked around, and that was when he saw an apparition at the end of his bed. In shock, he sat up and looked at it.

Staring back at him from the foot of his bed was a face. It looked like a human face except that the skin was grey-green and the eyes seemed to protrude slightly. The only non-human feature was the ears, which were similar to a mule's.

He pulled himself up to the top of his bed, and the thing kept staring at him. Then, guided by an instinct, he got out of bed and approached the thing. He walked all the way around it, and it remained motionless, except for the eyes, which followed him.

He almost spoke to it, but said that he had the distinct feeling that if he spoke to it, it was going to speak back.

He slowly got back into bed and closed his eyes tightly. When he opened them again, the thing was gone. He never saw it again.

To this day it scares him to mention this incident.