My Mom's family experienced a strange string of events in the early 1940's.
My Grandfather had just bought a house. The house was part of a U-shaped building which the landlord divided into three, keeping one arm of the U-shape for his family and selling off the remaining two parts. My Grandfather bought the horizontal part of the U-shape.
My Mom's family were animal lovers (they still are!) and they had quite an assortment at that time. Three cows, one merino Ram (imported from Australia), one orange crested cockatoo (again from Australia), a talking parakeet, two Macaque monkey, a German Shepherd Dog, and a mongoose.
It was a winter evening. All the windows were shut and bolted. The curtains were drawn to keep the drought at bay. The whole family was relaxed and having a nice family time in the hall when literally, out of the blues, a small blue light appeared and started shimmering on the ceiling. The moment the light appeared all the animals started to act abnormally.
The cows, settled peacefully for the evening in the cowshed, started to move restlessly and gave terrified moos. The dog howled; the birds started squawking; the mongoose, which was in the kitchen looking for titbits from my grandma, squeaked and ran away to its nest (a large earthen urn on the ground) and refused to come out even when coaxed with its favourite snack. The worst was the ram which became so restless, that it started banging its head against the walls violently in the cowshed (after this event, the wall had to be rebuilt as the ram had demolished it completely).
This went on everyday as soon as dusk approached. In the beginning, no one related the appearance of the strange light with the weird animal behaviour. Everybody thought someone must have been blowing on a whistle whose sound was only audible to the animals and was disturbing them. In fact, the strange blue light was entirely overlooked. This was until the head cook actually put two and two together, relating the appearance of the blue light with the animals' disturbing behaviour.
So again some theories cropped up. Some said the blue light came from a torch which someone had been focusing from outside. This was discarded when it was pointed out that all the windows were closed and curtained.
The Head Cook got utterly fed up with this daily distress and declared that he would "deal" with the light the next time it showed up (he was an absolutely fearless guy).
That evening, the moment the light appeared on the wall, he grabbed a broom, got up on a chair and started "beating" the wall where the light kept shimmering. The moment he started "beating" the light, it started flickering, and danced across the wall to avoid the broom. The cook was relentless in his pursuit and slowly the light flickered and dimmed and then disappeared. Needless to say, as soon as the light went out, all the animals returned to normal.
This became a household ritual every evening for the next few days to the consternation of the whole family.
This whole incident stopped abruptly after some days but strange and morbid things happened during this time that left the family devastated. It so happened that everybody would start the day with a palpitating heart, not knowing what they would find.
The animals were the first to feel its "wrath". One of the cows was found dead in the cowshed. The vet couldn't give a logical reason at all for its death. The parakeet was found hanging from its perch with its neck wrung and torn off. The mongoose was found dead. Apparently, its head had been bashed with a whole brick while it was leaving its nest (the nest's entrance was narrow, like an igloo).
The German Shepherd was found strangled in its own chain (happened sometime in the night). It was tied to a window railing and no way could it have strangled itself.
The ram, which was my Grandmother's favourite, was found dead in the morning in the cowshed. It had been strangled by its own chain, with its tongue hanging out, like a foot or so from its mouth.
One of the Macaque monkeys was found dead in the morning. It looked like it had been terrified to death. (On a sad note: the other monkey, pining away for its mate, starved itself to death, but it happened after the light's disappearance.)
Only the cockatoo, another favourite of GrandMa, survived. In fact, it lived up to a ripe old age until the late 80's. One of my uncles have had it stuffed as a remembrance.
This is a favourite family scary story for all of us. Even 3-4 generations later, we still talk about it, puzzling over the years about the gruesome events. This house was later found out to be haunted and there were quite a few of spooky stories related to this house. My Grandmother also lost 2 newborn children and a 3 year old daughter while residing in this house and nearly died of a broken heart.
Whatever was in that house was thoroughly evil...
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