The Glowing Man

It was at least four years ago that my friend and I experienced the event described below, however it is still fresh in our minds and we still bring it up frequently.

It was mid-summer and night had fallen about an hour ago. My friend and I were swimming in her above-ground pool in her backyard, enjoying the water which was still warm from the sunny day. I was sleeping over that night, but the both of us were unwilling to leave the fun of the pool, despite the darkness and the hungry mosquitoes. We felt perfectly safe - after all, her parents were right inside the house. Somewhere in the middle of one of our games of Marco Polo, we both halted as we heard a strange noise coming from the forest to the right of her yard. It seemed, at first, like some sort of sharp buzzing or crackling sound. It would sound shortly and regularly. We put it off, at first, as perhaps the neighbor's bug-zapper. But it soon became clear, as the sound got closer and louder, that it was definately the crackling of leaves in the woods. I recall, at this point, my friend saying that perhaps we should go inside. I said something to the effect of, "No, don't worry about it. It's probably a squirrel or raccoon or something." I wanted to keep on swimming, after all! But the sound got closer and clearer, and it became obvious that it was no squirrel or raccoon - it was being made by something much, much larger and heavier than that.

I began to get nervous, but still tried to pass it off as no big deal, even as my friend stepped out of the pool and began to towel off. Suddenly, I heard my friend shout, "LOOK!" as she pointed towards the direction of the sound. I began to swim up to the edge of the pool closest to the area. I began to say something like, "What? There's nothing...Oh *expletive*!" There was certainly something there alright! A basic human shape, but far taller than any human - I'd estimate it at 9 to 12 feet tall - that seemed to be made entirely out of a very dim glow. It had no features I could see other than blackness where eyes ought to be. I was slowly moving forward to the sounds of the crunching. I'd seen enough, and I don't think I've ever gotten out of a pool faster in my life.
I grabbed my shoes, towel, and glasses as fast as I could and my friend and I held hands and ran down the pool deck steps and across her lawn as fast as we could. She called for her parents and we told them there was something coming into the yard from the forest. Her father took the dog and went outside to check, but they found nothing.

My friend and I compared stories later and the descriptions of the creature matched. We didn't get much sleep that night. We never saw the creature again, nor anything like it. But to this day we refer to him as the Glowing Man.

Our friends are probably sick of hearing the story by now, but when you experience something like that...you just can't keep it to yourself!