Memory told of a daylight sighting as a youth near Fenton witnessed in Whiteside County, Illinois

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I was 14 in 2000, and it was a soggy spring day. Overcast, threatening rain. I had been playing with a childhood friend with whom I've since lost contact on my Grandma's 14 acre wooded property. I was standing on a large stack of railroad ties my deceased grandfather had accumulated from his time in U&P employ, and stacked up behind the barn, next to the horse corral. I was standing on top of it, throwing rocks into the swampy ground down the hill, or building a fort or something at the time. My friend was milling around the gate between what would become my aunt's property, a 6 acre parcel of land with an abandoned house on it at the time, the same wooded creek running on the north side of the property that separated my Grandma's land following it's property line. He had been heading through it into the empty property. I remember looking away for a few minutes, before looking back up, and spotted him running full-tilt with a look of panic in his eyes. Instead of climbing over t...