The Black Eyed Children

The internet is rife with paranormal reports, theories, or stories. We are all familiar with the common ones; UFOs, bigfoot, psychics, ghosts. The Black Eyed Children, or Black Eyed Kids (BEK) is one such story that recently came to my attention again.

What are Black Eyed Kids (BEKs)? According to the stories, they are children, usually young teen age or pre-teen (7-16 years of age) who mysteriously appear, often at night. They are pale, creepy in behavior, and, most notably, they have completely black eyes. Commonly, the kids will request entry into the home, usually asking for the telephone or something like that. Those who have encountered them describe bad feelings about the children who are refused entrance.

An article in the Examiner, by Barbara Schneider, offers this:

Black-eyed children have but one consistent request, invite us in. Whatever you do, don't invite them into your home!

One wonders what would happen if the kids were invited in. All of the reports I've seen revolve around the person having the encounter not inviting them in. Perhaps the ones that did weren't able to file the report?

She goes on to cite paranormal author David Weatherly:

Weatherly says there are thousands of reported sightings of these Black Eyed Children. Sometimes they travel in pairs, sometimes in groups and sometimes you’ll see just one. They knock on doors and tap on windows all over the world, asking to be let in.

Another article at the site Mysterious Universe, by Jason Offutt, relates a tale from Kerrie Kisner of an encounter with an unusual boy:

“I froze. His eyes were black as night, very dull, almost dead,” Kisner said. “The look he gave me has haunted me. The feeling I got from him was as though he wasn’t all there, almost ghostly.”

Mr Offutt also cites another experiencer who asserts that the BEKs are vampires. Indeed.

I first heard about BEKs sometime in the ‘90s. I’ve seen reports dating back to the late 1980’s, but they are not particularly credible. The reports I remember seeing back in the day played up more of an “alien” vibe, whereas many of these more recent reports seem to play up more of a “demon” or “undead” vibe.

Besides the creepy, black-eyed children, all the reports share another commonality; a complete lack of evidence. The BEK stories serve as a good example of the power of the urban legend. There is, I think, more than a bit of the idea of a cultural meme with the stories. The shared stories primes the imagination of the fantasy prone (or those who wish to pass off fiction as fact) to create experiences that follow the pattern of the BEK stories. This influence is also seen in UFO abduction reports where the description of the aliens converge to a common image, for example the grey aliens, only after the idea of the grey has been disseminated amongst the community.[1]

I did find this debunk , by Gus MuldoonMarlin Bressi. to be amusing. He theorizes that perhaps they are just normal kids with dialated pupils, or on drugs. Perhaps. I’m not even sure there is much of a phenomenon at all. I suspect that these stories have more of Slender Man (as a mostly artificial phenomenon which took on a life of its own) in them than anything else.

I wonder if the BEK stories started arising around the time of the goth movement, pale, odd, black eyes, nah.

[1] http://www.theness.com/index.php/ufos-the-psychocultural-hypothesis/