I was 7 and my brother was 5. We were living in a small town in S. Idaho. One night we woke up to the hysterical screams coming from my Mom's room. My brother and I ran into the master bedroom to see what the matter was. My Mom was terrified - just flat out scared of something and could not speak. She was hyperventilating and my Dad was really scared. I remember him telling my brother and I to kneel down while he gave her a blessing. A few minutes after he was finished, my Mom went to sleep, and my Dad told my brother and I to go back to bed.
We dutifully went back to our bedroom on the other side of the house - by this time it was really late - and we were both tired. We go to our room which was on the back side of the house, facing the pasture we had behind our place. A neighbor ran lots of cattle back there. We had a back window that faced back there and I distinctly remember laying down to go to sleep and looking out the window - seeing a nearly-full moon and thinking how bright it was outside. I fell asleep pretty quickly - but not for long. I woke up with a start with my little brother shaking me - he could not talk he was scared so bad. He just kept pointing towards the window and shaking me. I get up to look and I don't see anything so I take him to get my Dad. My Dad gives him a blessing and he calms down, but we're wondering why my brother was pointing towards the window.
So, my dad gives me a shotgun and sits me in the front room. He takes another gun and locks the door behind him to go check in the backyard with a floodlight that we had. That was the longest 10 minutes in my young life - waiting there for my dad... thinking how I could muster the courage to blow whatever away that might have gotten my Dad...
I remember him walking back through the door - white as a sheet and locking the door securely - going for the phone and calling the cops. He would not tell us what he saw, just said that we'd be safe inside and we said a prayer. We did not sleep that much that night.
In the morning we went out back and saw cow remains scattered all over our backyard. Some of them in strange configurations - the sexual organs hung up on trees right outside our bedroom window.
To this day, my brother cannot go to sleep without lights on - he's 31 years old - he swears that the things doing the butchering he saw that night were other-worldly. I don't know what it was, but it was definitely the closest I had come to pure evil in my short life...