In my country, the Philippines, a lot of people believe in mythological creatures like the Tikbalang (a half-man, half-horse), the Kapre (a tree giant), the Aswang (a woman who literally leaves her lower body during the night to eat fetuses) and such. Even elders told us that they were real, and that every time we walk in places full of plants and tree, we have to say "Tabi-tabi po" or "Please excuse us" as a way of respecting what sort of entities reside in that area.
Now I know that this doesn't sound convincing at all, since creatures are said to "only be made-up stories just to scare people", but I'm narrating from my own experience and something definitely happened to me from a past that I can never forget. (Also, let me clarify that most people of all ages DO believe in these things, since a lot of abnormal activities tend to happen in our country.)
We were still living in Visayas, one of the Philippines' 3 main islands, and it was mostly rural areas. While 5 year old me was playing outside, a tree was getting cut down in our front yard and I started to cry while saying that "the tree is crying". I started running towards the tree cutters and my parents freaked out when they realized that I was trying to stop them. My parents said that I had a weird connection with that tree and that I cried for days after the it was cut. We planted a small seedling on where the original tree was planted.
It was my 6th birthday and I was helping my grandfather dig water systems around our garden (the seedling we planted was also there) until my shovel hit something metallic. It turned out to be a bunch of 1 peso coins (6 peso coins in total). There's no way they coins could've went there, as the garden was full of plants and we would've seen traces of someone leaving the coins, footprints or crushed grass, absolutely nothing. My grandfather saw this and dug them back into the ground. He said that if I find something interesting near plants or anthills, I should not take it, because it's a bad omen that some strange entity is trying to lure me into their "world" with gifts and such. He told these to the rest of my family and I couldn't understand why they looked horrified at that time. It wasn't a big deal for me at that time.
My family helped me move the seedling somewhere farther from the our house and told me to not visit the tree anymore. They were having suspicions that 1) the original tree had a duwende (a dwarf) living there and 2) that the duwende was courting me because I loved the original tree and replaced it with a seedling when it was cut down. Duwendes can be good or bad, depending on how humans treat them. They thought of it to be a good duwende, but they weren't so sure, so they told me to never visit the tree again.
7 year old me got sick, like really sick, doctors couldn't even cure me. My parents were agitated upon hearing the doctors' explanations that they have no idea what kind of sickness I had. They had to run countless tests, tried different medications, even attempted contacting exclusive hospitals, but overhearing my father saying that death is possible almost crushed me. The worst part was that I knew and felt that I was dying and I couldn't do anything about it.
Before time was wasted, my family ran through final options, then my mom decided to let me see an albularyo (a witch doctor) she knew because of my history with an unknown entity. The albularyo immediately figured out the sickness and told my mom that I got it from an angered spirit. The albularyo said that the duwende probably got upset when I moved the seedling away from our house and when I no longer visited its seedling. We were instructed to cook the finest meals and offer it to the seedling. The next day, we did what we were told. The day after our offering, my sickness mysteriously ceased.
Our family moved to Luzon, also one of the Philippines' 3 main islands after a few months because my parents and most of my other relatives found better job opportunities there. I made sure to bid farewell to the seedling and told it that I'll probably never return but I wished it good luck. When we fled off from Visayas, I felt lighter and much more relieved.
I've been living in Luzon for years now and it's a highly-urbanized area, so it's less likely that I'll encounter an entity again. So far, life has been pretty normal and I do try to avoid telling these stories to others as they might be skeptical but I guess my most terrifying experience ever will always be the time when I encountered something that should not even exist in the first place.