The boy looked up the tree and cried to his father. ‘There’s a bird with a human face!’ His father, who was skeptical, was speechless when he saw it.

Shadow on the tree

In a quiet residential neighborhood outside Austin, Texas, nine-year-old Ryan was playing in his backyard on an evening when the sky began to turn orange. As he chased a ball, he looked up at an old oak tree, and the blood in his body froze. On the branch, something huge. It has wings. But its face, for all intents and purposes, was human. Ryan’s eyes locked with it for a few seconds, unable to speak. The next thing he knew, he was running as fast as he could toward home.