Yes, Virginia, there is a real devil

Here's a personal anecdote (which I post with permission) by a long-time Tblog reader who was into the occult prior to his Christian conversion: 

Just before being saved, I was attending prayer meetings with this group of charismatic roman catholics (this isn't the weird part, believe it or not). One night one of the priests was speaking and his voice kind of faded out as this very oppressive, palpable darkness filled the room. It wasn't so much a lack of light as it was an unbearable sense of evil. After a while, I could clearly make out the sound of cloven hooves stalking around nearby. When I was saved that night, I had a vision of sorts - one in which I saw two paths, at one end was Satan and at the other was the Lord. I went towards Christ and I was immediately filled with the realization that everything in Scripture was true. All the stories about David, everything about the Apostles, I knew that the whole thing was true from the first page to the last. 

With regard to the sound of hooves, I know that this is a popular cliche and that if Satan has any physical form at all then maybe he doesn't actually have goat horns and hooves etc. But who knows, he might be willing to use that form in order to fulfill expectations. As for the vision, I sometimes wonder if that was really the result of my imagination or not. Jesus looked kind of the same way that you see him in paintings. Satan looked like a being cloaked in smoky, shadowy darkness. Perhaps if it was a real vision, I would be more sure of it.