Kentucky, August 21, 1955. A family is playing cards by lamplight in a farmhouse outside Kelly when a visitor runs in from the well. Something silver just dropped out of the sky into the gully. They laugh at him.

An hour later, the dog runs under the house and won't come out.

Two men step outside with guns, and something small is walking toward them across the yard. Glowing. An enormous head. Pointed ears. Huge yellow eyes. Long arms raised high over its head. When they shoot it, it rings like a metal bucket, flips over, and gets back up. For four hours, the creatures come to the windows, crouch on the roof, float down from the trees, and reach down to touch a man's hair. The family flees to the police. The police search and leave. And at 3:30 in the morning, one of them is at the mother's bedroom window, its claws hooked through the  ...