What good would a firearm be against a ghost or spirit anyway?
It is possible that it was a deaf/mute person who being only able to communicate via sign language if they encountered a person they did not known especially a night in such a place they might choose not to use sign language as...
1.the person will likely not read sign.
2. the person might see a hand movement as threat.
I have to agree with periunder you have to be very careful in such a situation and not allow fear to cause you to make a serious mistake.
Sound can travel in very strange ways at night and something that should be easy to hear will not be and other times something very quite can get your attention.Just from my experience living out in the woods many things can throw you and your senses can fool you.
My personal rule of thumb at night or in other low light conditions if I see another person I will keep my distance if they do not pass I will go another way not with my back turned of course.Part of this reasoning is because around here in this part of Florida there are black bears and very rarely cougars.
Once after a summer nights rain I walked out into my field with one of my dogs.It was nice misty out and you could smell the rain in the air still.At the end of the road I stood for a minute looking up at the sky my dog seemed not notice anything.We where standing down wind so any thing downwind of us we could not smell.
I looked down the dirt road and I could just see roughly 50 feet away what I at first thought was a person crouched down sneaking>I own several guns but usually do not carry them unless I am getting ready to go hunt or to do some shooting so I have nothing but by fists.My dog (a lab) she could now smell what ever it was and froze which made me think this must not be a human but something the dog fears.I see then that it was not a person but a black bear now it is only maybe 20 feet away.
I yelled "Holly flying(*) stingrays (*) its a fantastic(*) bear!!" This sudden noise startled the bear and it stopped I yelled at my lab to run and she ran and I threw the glass of water I had in my hand at the bear and it turned and ran and so did I back to the house.
Now normally you can smell a bear from a ways up to 100 yards if you are down wind from one in this case the air was thick with moisture and on top of that the bear was up wind of our noses so even my lab did not smell this bear.
(*)= family friendly version real word starts with the same letter