Fort Pickens Ghost

I live in Pensacola, Florida, which is one of the most haunted cities in the state. This town is famous for its haunted lighthouse (which was featured on an episode of Ghost Hunters) and many other haunted buildings. One of the most popular haunted locations is an old abandoned fort on the beach called Fort Pickens. This place has become a tourist location and many go there to go sightseeing regardless of if they know about the ghosts or not. I have had several creepy experiences here, but I had one pretty recently that was unlike anything I have ever experienced.

I was at the fort at night with my boyfriend (I will call him Scott) and two of our best friends (I will call them Amy and Adrian). I had just started dating my boyfriend back then, so I hadn't really told him about any of my history of paranormal experiences, and Amy and Adrian don't really believe in ghosts, so I hadn't told them either. At the fort, there is a big wall surrounding the fort and Scott and I were standing at a certain point on the wall that overlooked a large clearing with no trees or plants or anything, just sand. Amy and Adrian were on the ground right under us. I was just overlooking the clearing when something caught my eye.

It looked like a person was standing in the middle of the clearing, waving. At first, I thought it was an actual person, but my group was there at nightfall, which is a time when no one is really supposed to be at the fort anyway. I had not seen or heard anyone else around the fort at all. I tried to take a closer look at the person, but it was too dark to make out any features. I could just see a faint figure of someone standing there waving up at me. Then I realized that the more I tried to focus on them, the less I could see them. At the exact moment I realized what was happening, my heart sunk. The figure I saw was slowly disappearing and then reappearing before my eyes.

I thought I was going crazy, but then Scott said "Hey, does anybody see that kid?"

I immediately whirled around to look at Scott. I asked "You see that too?"

He said "yeah, that's really creepy. He keeps disappearing."

I turned around to look at the figure again and it was very faint. I could barely even see the silhouette now. Scott and I decided to get down from the wall and go get closer to the person ourselves. So we went around to the stone staircase a few feet away and climbed down, told Amy and Adrian where we were going, and started walking in the direction of the figure we had seen. Just as we turned to walk toward it, we realized that it was gone. Nothing was there in its place, just an open clearing with nothing there. We would have just debunked it as being an actual person who just had walked away, but that clearing is pretty big. There was nowhere for anyone to go that quickly in the time it took for us to get down from the wall. We walked back to our friends and told them about what we had seen and they brushed it off, saying "I saw him, he was creepy but it was probably just a person"

But if it was just a person, why were they disappearing on and off? Why did they disappear completely when we started walking toward them? I still can not explain this experience.