Ghost Man Or Skinwalker?

I live in Gallup, NM a city surrounded by Native American culture and history. We have many surrounding towns and reservations that have been here for a very long time and many people claim they are haunted.

My experience actually takes place right in Gallup on the east side of the city near a very small reservation. My best friend visited her sister every weekend who lived in the low rental apartments on the east side. Right across from these apartments is an elementary school, the one I actually attended when I was a little girl.

During these weekends I would spend the night with my friend at her sister's apartment. At night when there was absolutely nothing to do and the kids and parents were asleep, we'd go outside to the park that was right there in the middle of the apartments and chill. One night we became so bored we actually took off walking, I'd say it was about 2 AM. We were used to being up so late so we were wide awake, of course like any teenage girl wanting to stay up late. Well we walked behind apartments where there is no light and tons of bushes and prairie dog holes in the ground.

As we were walking, I sensed that someone was staring at us or following us (I am very sensitive to these kinds of things, so usually when I sense someone is looking at me or following me, I'm right) so I turned around to look and nothing was there. As I turned to look forward, my friend suddenly grabbed my arm and said in a scared whisper, "Oh my god what was that?" I looked into the darkness and saw nothing. The wind was slightly blowing that night and there were a few trees ahead of us so I passed it off as the wind moving the leaves. I told her "It's just the wind, dude, chill out" and kept walking. But as I looked again, I saw what looked like a black figure moving through the trees I stopped and said "I think it might be a drunk crashing out back there for the night."

Just so I wouldn't scare the crap out of my friend I kept a calm voice, which was awful hard for me to do because I was sensing that this "thing" in the trees wasn't a nice personality, I said "Do you want to go back home?" And she said "No we're almost to the store, let's just keep going." So as we kept walking we heard movement in the trees a swift fast movement. We started walking faster, like power walking. I heard something behind us and I looked, and it looked like a wounded or hurt dog. I wasn't really scared because where I live there's a lot of that. But what I heard next stopped me dead in my tracks and paralyzed me from my legs up. I heard this "dog" moan and growl at the same time as if it wanted me for a midnight snack. I literally couldn't move and my friend was trying to distract me saying "Come on! Come on! We gotta run!" but her screams sounded distant as if I had gone deaf or as if she was far away. I had made eye contact with this thing and I knew that that was a bad decision.

I closed my eyes and said a short prayer without even thinking I turned around and ran for my life with my friend close by my side. I tried not to look behind us but something was telling me to look, so I glanced behind us and a man running for us! But he wasn't just running he was on his hands and knees! I screamed and my friend joined in only because I scared her when I yelled. We ran faster. We finally got to the road where there was light and cars passing, we had ran for about 7 minutes straight and were completely out of breath. I remember our sides aching and cramping. We stopped to catch our breath and I turned to look behind us again and saw "the man" way in the distant darkness running back to where we had come from.

We walked not even 2 minutes and finally got to the store. The lady behind the counter gave us a weird look and asked us "Are you girls okay?" we replied out of breath "Yes, just a late night run." I could tell she didn't believe us so she asked "Did you girls run from the apartments?" I answered "Yeah...why?" and she said "Oooh! Are you girls sure your okay?" We looked at each other and my friend told her "Well not really, we just had a horrible encounter with something, we don't know what it is or who it was." The lady said "You girls just ran from a skinwalker. Whoever it was always chases someone he catches walking the road at night. You girls are lucky you made it this far!" As if we weren't shaken up already, what she had just told us had added to it.

We didn't have any money but she offered us a bottle of water and a ride back home. She closed down the store and gave us a ride back home. As we passed the bushes and trees we had just come from, we all had definitely saw something running but the lady told us to ignore it and close our eyes.

We finally entered the apartment complex and she asked us "which is yours?" "Apartment D." As we were getting out of the car she told us "You girls stay home at night now. There's no need for you two young girls to be running around at 2 in the morning. Keep yourselves safe, you hear?" We nodded and said goodbye and thank you.

After that night we never left the apartment complex past 12 AM. To this day I am still shook up about what I had experienced that night and I also still don't know what it was that followed us that night.