I have had encounters with entities which I believe are demons. At age four, shortly after my family and I moved to a new home in Massachusetts, I began being visited by short, stocky, black entities with glowing red eyes. I had encounters with these beings mostly in my bedroom at night, but I also saw them twice outside of my room. My parents told me that these were nightmares and although I wanted to believe them, I never could. They were far too vivid and realistic. These encounters continued for the five years that we lived in that house.

Since moving from that home, I have had highly strange and unexplained happenings off and on throughout my life, including a period of missing time in which I was found by my mother wandering in a daze far from home. My mother inexplicably knew precisely where to find me. She was a very devout Catholic but also had many strange experiences, as well as frighteningly accurate precognitive dreams.

Because of my history of experiences I've always had an interest in the paranormal. For a couple of years, I had a podcast on the subject and I became friendly with one of the people I'd interviewed. He was a researcher of unknown animals and he invited me on an expedition to the Northwest in June of 2014. We met with a man who claimed to have been communicating with a group of Bigfoot in a remote area on a mountain ridge deep in the forests of Oregon. He took us to this location, which both my friend and I immediately noticed had a very oppressive atmosphere.

The first night in this place was uneventful but during the 2nd night, we began hearing heavy footfalls and cracking branches in the woods surrounding our camp. We saw nothing clearly, although the moon was near-full and I saw silhouettes of beings moving between the trees. Those first two nights we went to sleep at around 1:30 AM. On the 3rd night, we stayed up later in the hope of getting a clear view of one of these creatures. Then, at 2:30 AM, we noticed that at about 100 feet up the road to our camp a glowing mist had formed and was getting steadily brighter. It began to glow reddish-orange at the center and within this glow, we could see a barren, rocky landscape and a withered tree. From this area stepped two, short, squat, black creatures with glowing red eyes -- the very same entities that I saw repeatedly as a child. They stood just up the road watching us, and at one point they came within 10 feet of us and we saw them very clearly. The same scenario occurred the following night, our last at that strange place. My friend and I stayed awake all night, both nights, fending off these things and preventing them from entering the perimeter of our camp.

Father, what do you make of this? I swear it is all true. Are these demonic entities attached to me? Also, my understanding of Catholic teaching is that demons are fallen angels, but Protestants differentiate between the two. These seemed real and physical, not disembodied spirits.

Thank you.