Glowing red eyed monster legend

A different idea on mothman.
Going to give some folklore here. For the life of me I can not find the book but it was about the folklore of Rennselaer county NY. It was from the 1700s I want to say? I found it on Google books when I lived up there. Lot of great ghost stories and weird happenings.

Anyway the folklore is from a Native American Nation / Tribe describing an attack on a woman and her husband.

The two of them took over a long abandoned home a couple miles away from the village. The villagers and elders warned them that the place was evil. They lived there anyway with their newborn. The way the book described it was a main living area with an upstairs that one climbed a ladder and then opened a hatch to a loft area. Things were fine then the wife went into the loft and saw a creature with red glowing eyes. Husband checked and saw nothing. Wife then refused to be alone in the house. She would wait outside while he was out hunting etc.

He came home after a day complaining of a headache. He went up to the loft while she cooked dinner. There was a loud scuffle noise from upstairs and then blood started dripping from the ceiling. The wife poked her head up and saw a small skeleton figure eating her husband but it did not notice her. She went back down and grabbed the baby and made a run for it. She claimed the monster soon gave chase and she started throwing bits of her clothing to distract it. By the time she got to the village she was naked. She told the villagers what had happened and they grabbed weapons and torches and headed up there.

When they got there they said the creature was inside the house screaming and smashing around. They circled the house and set it on fire meaning to attack it when it fled. The only thing that ran out was a white rabbit with glowing red eyes.

Following that other monsters such as the mothman have been reported. Always the same glowing red eyes. Always in and around the NY, Penn, VT, NH, and NJ area.

What if this monster is a shape shifting entity. A singular being that will feed until hunted or chased away from an area.