This is the most unusual experience I've ever had - and have found nothing to really explain or corroborate it in the years since it happened save a scene from Jaime Hernandez's Locas stories. I'd love to hear any suggestions on what it may have been or subjects that might cover it.

One evening I was out at farm for a Halloween bonfire (just a party nothing ritualistic). It had rained earlier in the evening; the ground was kind of clay-like, not exactly wet, but not wholly dry, either. There had been numerous people walking through the area. I was a lone, little kid playing detective by the barn while what was left of the party wound out the evening in the kitchen talking. I was following my "suspect's" footprints - male dress shoe prints or possibly cowboy boots. I was creating a story in my head when the footprints changed. I stopped dead and looked around first without moving so as not to "disturb the scene" - still in detective mode obviously. There were no other prints to confuse what I was seeing. The prints just changed! I checked the grassier areas around the path, but couldn't see any signs of a man walking off path nor did the prints turn in any way. I looked at the prints very closely. One step was a shoe print; the next step was very clearly a chicken's foot going in the same direction. I followed the chicken's prints which began to shrink until they were mouse-sized - still going in the same direction and heading into the barn. At that point, other prints obscured my trail; so, I don't know that they ever made it to the barn. I was VERY freaked out to say the least because I very carefully walked around those prints looking for anything to suggest that it was just some overlapping prints or something that just all happened to be going the same way in a step by step fashion. I did NOT go into the barn or around it. I was scared to death of what might be in there. Unable to figure it out, I ran to my mother and begged her to come with me. I wanted someone else to see it and I really wanted her to explain it to me. She did neither and wouldn't let me go back out.

The only reference I ever saw to anything remotely similar was in a "Locas" story by Jaime Hernandez where the Devil is following one of the characters as she tries to escape him. She has gone to Mexico, but he follows her as people which she knows aren't really people because they have chicken feet (which sounds funny but looks freaky). Immediately, I thought of that experience, but the prints got smaller, too.

I've read some books on shapeshifting, but... nothing sounds quite like this. Any myths, legends, anything?