I never really believed in the paranormal. I always thought people were crazy, or it was just a figment of their imagination. That changed in April of 2008, when I was 16 years old.

 There is a dark, wooded area in a huge neighborhood called The Valley, located in Littleton, CO, in the Ken Caryl district. Lots of large, modern-day houses occupy The Valley (also spelled 'the valley', because the neighborhood is located in a large valley). On one side of highway 4-70, the valley is bordered from the highway with the hogback (a long row of hills, basically). The wooded area is located over the hogback, inside the valley, near the only enterance, which is off 4-70. It is very easy to get lost in the valley. There are lots of biking, hiking, & horseback trails, along with a plethera of little forests, about the size of two houses put together. There, also, are lots of burial sites, many unexplored.

 One evening, my friend, Sandy, whose house we were staying at for the night, and I decided to ride our bikes towards the enterance. (Her house is pretty far back, about 5 or 7 miles.) Riding behind her down the leaf-covered, windy roads, I noticed a white fence that looked like it had blood on it. We stopped and saw a layer of what looked like blood smeared on a small patch of grass below the fence. I looked at the blood on the fence, and I noticed a thin piece of rubber or plastic, but it seemed like very rough skin. Looking closely, the skin had very tiny, almost microscopic, red and dark grey beads covering it. Thinking a weird type of animal tried to jump the fence but missed, Sandy crawled over the fence and noticed, about 5 feet behind the fence, another blood smear covering a tiny patch of grass. She said it's probably just a type of animal, and we're just freaking out over nothing.

 We haven't come down this road before, and we ended up winding around the back of five houses that we passed on the other side, where we saw the blood. However, it came to a dead end, leading up to a tiny, tree-covered hill with a small trail made of dead grass. (I think the wind-around was used because people like to stop on the road and hike down a hill to a fishing pond, which is on the opposite side of the houses we passed.) Anyway, we were curious, and the sun was just beginning to set, so we parked our bikes infront of the hill and hiked up.

 After about 15 minutes of walking through a dim-lit cluster of trees, we realized we had no idea where we were going. We turned around, and walked for about 20 minutes in the direction we thought we came from. Uneasy, we stopped, thinking we were idiots because the area didn't seem all that big.

 We decided to try the left, but we suddenly heard a large boulder being dropped to our right. In fact, it was pretty loud. We turned to our right and Sandy screamed. I looked where she was looking and there was a short, plump figure that disappeared in the blink of an eye. We were so freaked out, I almost cried. We huddled together and started walking to where the figure was standing.

 There, in the exact spot it was standing, was a puddle of blood covering abunch of leaves and dirt. We turned back to the path and saw a very large rock about 20 feet behind where Sandy was standing, but a little bit off the walkway. It was clean, almost like it didn't fit in with it's surrounding. Sandy said it must have just been placed there, because that rock wasn't there when we passed that spot. There was a funny cup-shaped indent at the top, so it was probably used by Native Americans as mortar and pastel.

 We walked for about five minutes when we heard these low groaning noises to our right, so we quickly walked in the opposite direction. We kept walking when we heard a voice from directly behind us say 'come here'. The voice was very demonic. The first thought that went through my mind was The Exorcist, because it sounded just like the demon from that movie. We screamed bloody murder and ran for our lives. I began to cry because I was so terrified. We quickly climbed this tiny little hill that led to a bare, classroom-sized graveyard, still surrounded by trees. That's when we noticed - there was no more sunlight. We were aided with the little light that the moon provided.

 We stood at the top of that little hill for about five minutes, when Sandy noticed something on the opposite side of the hill. It was that short, plump figure from before. We froze in terror. We stood there for about a minute staring at it, as we were sure it was staring at us. Suddenly, it moved slowly to the right, and it began inching it's way around the hill, toward us. We freaked out when we realized what it was doing. We decided to move with it in a circle around the top of the hill. We ended up standing right where it was previously standing. Curious, I slowly bent over & scanned the ground with my cell phone light. Under Sandy's right foot, there was a puddle of blood.

 I slowly pulled Sandy down with me and told her to look. We were whispering so quietly I could barely hear her, even though the highway was right over the other side of the hogback, which I knew wasn't far. I made sure to not take my eyes off the shadowy figure standing about 30 feet infront of us. I put my phone back in my pocket, taking my eyes off the figure. I noticed Sandy was staring at the blood, so I quickly turned towards the figure, only to see it 15 feet away from us, still standing and staring us down. I quickly pulled Sandy up and we began to slowly back up down the hill. Suddenly, we heard a crunch noise and we froze. We stared at the figure and it appeared to be eating something. A minute later, it threw its food to the left, and bent over a grave. It stayed in that position for about 10 seconds when suddenly this weird layer of darkness disappeared from its skin and revealed this reddish-grey rough looking skin. We could barely see, so I stepped forward and it looked up. What I saw, I will never forget. It was the most horrifying thing I had ever seen. From what I could make out, the eyes were a dark emerald green with a long, oval mouth, and two fangs, just like a wolf. I took a step back, as I was plauged with the deepest fear I had ever experienced. It looked back down and threw its arm back, revealing these long, straight nails that looked as pointed and sharp as needles. It threw its arm into the hard ground like it was just a soft puddle of mud. It began to viciously attack the ground with both arms. It stopped for a few seconds and then unearthed what looked like a cracked log. It examined it for a second and then threw it in our direction, landing about 3 feet to our right, and kept right on digging, making these low grunting sounds. Taking my hand, Sandy slowly inched over to it, bending over a bit to get a closer look. She grabbed , and pulled us down the hill, and we took off running faster than I had ever ran before.

 We ran for about 10 minutes, full-speed, until we hit a huge, steep hill. Without hesitation, we hiked it in about 2 minutes, when it normally would probably take around 10-15 minutes. When we reached the top, we overlooked a big section of Littleton. We had reached the hogback! We booked it down the other side, ignoring all the cuts and scratches on my legs. About half way down, we heard a loud gargling sound, almost like a lion with a very sore throat. I turned around and saw the creature at the top of the hogback. I froze. I didn't know whether to stand there or keep running, even though I knew Sandy was still running. The creature stood slouched over, like an ape. I took a step back, and it stood up. I could easily make out a rubbery dark red skin color. It had a row of horns across its forehead, which I hadn't noticed before when it looked up at us in the graveyard. The tail was about a foot long, and very bushy looking, almost like a fox tail covered in giant scaley beads. It turned around, facing away from me, and let out that same gargling sound. I took off running, and turned around only to see it was gone, which made me run even faster.

 I met Sandy at the side of the highway, and we booked it to the other side, encountering no cars, luckily. We ran into a hotel, where we called her mom to pick us up.

 I got a ride home, and stayed up all night with the lights on, texting Sandy about what had just happened. I asked her what the object was that the thing threw near us. She said that it was the skeleton of a forearm.

 Years later, we have never gone back to that place. I get chills just thinking about that freak encounter. I wonder if anyone else in the valley had experienced it before, why no one has talked about it before Surely it must have encountered other humans? The valley may be huge, but it's not gigantic.

 I only speak of that night with Sandy. If we told anyone else our experience, they would laugh and just say we were probably drunk or high.