I never really believed in ghosts or anything supernatural before I had this experience with my friends. I have a lot of stories my friends would consider "supernatural". This exact story still scares me to this day, even though it happened months ago; I still think about it all the time.
The fact that we never found out what "The thing" was really bothered me.
Over the summer me, my mom, and a couple friends of mine all went to Sturgis, South Dakota because my mom took an assignment there (she's a traveling nurse). -We originally live in Kansas-. We stayed there the entire summer and a little bit of the school year. My mom rented a house with her roommate, while me and my three friends all lived in a house down the street from my mom's (we were too loud and stayed up all night so they rented out our own separate house for us, how cool is that?) A few months passed and things were pretty good in South Dakota, the people were all nice, the nature was breathtaking, and there were nothing but positive vibes. That all took a very dramatic turn one day when my mom and Michele were eating lunch at The Knuckle Saloon, a world famous bar, and grill located in Sturgis. My friends and I decided to drive 30 minutes to Rapid City to go shopping since we had just gotten our allowances from our parents and one of my friends is old enough to drive. So we drive to Rapid City and go shopping for a few hours until she decides that she's bored and wants to go exploring since that was only our second time in Rapid City. We leave the mall and drive around for an hour or so until we find a beautiful waterfall hidden behind a bunch of trees and huge boulders. So she parks the car, and we all get out to take pictures of the Waterfall.
We end up staying there for more than 15 minutes because we ended up hiking around the waterfall to take more pictures. One of my friends decides that she want's to explore on her own to take her own photos for her Instagram, so she wanders off and we don't think anything of it. My other friend (the one who drove us to the location) and I are still taking pictures with our cameras and are on Snapchat bragging to everybody about our view when all of a sudden we hear a blood-curdling scream coming from the opposite end of the waterfall. We kind of just look at each other completely shook and unsure of what to do, so we run towards the direction of the scream, and we see our other friend in the river confused as to how she got there. So she runs down the hill and runs down to her to see what was wrong, and she didn't say a single word. She just points towards a bunch of trees, so we both look in the direction she's pointing and see a black figure. I couldn't make out what it was, but they swear up and down it wasn't "human" or "alive". It had the body of a little girl, but we couldn't see the face. It was completely black. As soon as I saw the figure I ran down the hill to help them up and over the railing, and we all ran to the car and drove off.
Later that night I decided to ask her what happened and how she managed to fall over the railing, down the hill, and into the river. She told me that she was leaning over the railing to get photos of the river when all of a sudden she feels someone tap her on the back. She thought it was either me or our other friend and doesn't think much of it so she proceeds to take pictures of the river when all of a sudden she felt someone forcefully push her over the railing. She went tumbling down the hill and into the river (thank god it was still or she would have drowned or gotten swept away). She says that she looked up to see what had pushed her, and it was the figure of a little girl, she couldn't see the face or anything because it was completely black. So she stands up and starts screaming at the girl (which I couldn't hear because we were on the other side of the waterfall). These were her exact words "I stood up to ask the thing that pushed me why it did that when all of a sudden it comes flying at my face. LITERALLY flying. I fell back down and starting weeping and crying calling for you guys. I don't know what that thing was, but I definitely know it wasn't human." I brush it off thinking it was a bunch of nonsense and that she was only trying to scare me, until the next day when we drive past the waterfall with my mom to go see Mount Rushmore, and my mom pulls up a news article about a little girl who drowned in the river a year ago. I get the shivers down my back and I immediately get goosebumps. She was telling the truth all along.
What did we see? Was it the little girl or was it just our nerves playing tricks on us? I'll never know what it was, but I have some pretty good ideas as to what it could have been. Would any of you have any idea as to what it was that we saw and attacked my friend? I keep thinking it's the little girl that drowned in the same river, but I have a feeling it isn't. Why would she try to attack my friend? I don't know. Someone help me get some closure on this.