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Black-Eyed Kids

Right. I've read what little there is on this story now. Seems like a bag of poo to me. The journo is clearly credulous and the stories are somewhat circular. Seems like a fear reaction to teens. Justified post hoc by those with a slight mystical bent. For example, the reasoning may be 'I'm an adult and felt scared' but because none of the usual fear indicators were there e.g. menacing tone, gun, knives (indeed, polite seemed the order of the day) the story teller has to justify. Note the confirmation by the journo is his friend's psychic friend. Oh lordy!
 
Further...been trying to find any possible links, references etc to any more sightings, 'facts' and so forth. There are many discussions on forums, but apart from the journo, missy and somebody else (beer dampening memory) there is not alot. Conclusion? Nothing in it...good firelight stuff though 8)
 
From the latest batch of "True Tales" on About.com. (Which are probably about as reliable a source as the Weekly World News, but nevertheless a rich source of modern folklore)
Black-Eyed Woman
by Chris

This incident happened a little over a year ago, and I've never forgotten it. My husband and I were on our way up north on I-75 during the afternoon. Luckily, it was not at our normal time in the evening. We have a little place in northern lower Michigan, and often go up there for the weekends. As was our custom, we pulled in at our usual rest stop, and I went into the women's restroom.

As I was preparing to leave the room, I suddenly noticed a thin, dark-haired woman standing alone and starring directly at me. I instantly felt a terrible sense of dread, as though there was something deeply unnatural about her. I then noticed the eyes which had been staring coldly at me, and they were completely black. I saw no color whatsoever, and no pupils. I felt an extremely strong need to get away from her as quickly as possible, as there was something quietly threatening about her. Her stare was devoid of any emotion other than something very cold and disconnected.

My instant and unwavering feeling during this whole experience was that she was not human. I don't know what me made feel this so strongly, but it was my most singular, strongest sense while looking at her. There also was something almost predatory about her, as though she was homing in on prey while she stood there so still. I also had a strange sense of her feeling superior or stronger in some way. Again, the sense of a predator watching its prey. I left as quickly as possible, showing as little reaction to her as possible. It seemed important, for some unknown reason, for me to act unaffected by her while in her presence. I felt a huge sense of relief as I got back into the car and left. I have to say that this was one of the most memorable brief experiences I've ever had around a person, especially a stranger. I have never been able to shake the unexplainable feeling that she wasn't human.

source
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See also More Black Eyed People

I predict that the Black-Eyed ones will gradually come to replace the Men in Black as our most prolific 'almost human' bogeyman, now that the MIBs themselves have been relegated to the status of a Hollywood joke.
 
There's even less to BEKs than MIBs. Nice find though. No different from the rest re: style and so forth. I am waiting for the old schtick about 'reliable' witnesses to be bandied about. Then I will know that I am in la la land once more. However, this does not mean that I am not interested (good fortean an' all :D ). I note that I have not yet found any beks in the UK or elsewhere...natch, does not mean that it has not yet happened, but am researching...

I'm thinking post hoc rationalisations of panic attacks when meeting a 'wrong'un'. A wrong'un is not supernatural, ufobased or whatever. However, we all (I assume) instinctively know when we meet people who give off odd vibes e.g. look, smell, attire or what have you. I forget that many people are easily intimidated (I'm not) and want to find an explanation - although, as Asimov said, why allow ignorance to guide your suppositions (or words to that effect).

Right, BEKS, according to the evidence (ho ho, sounds like a book title there...), are human looking, familiar with technology and erudite. They may very well be surfing the net and reading these articles. Please, my BEKs, answer us in regard to your mission or what you are! Or come over to London and scare some folks...
I don't mean to take the piss, but really! Scanty, scanty evidence...
 
Considering she had black hair, I recon it was just a little stray-goth. Also this is in the US, no offence guys but a goth in the states, especially a little bit out of the urban setting is still a "strange" sight and might "upset" some.
So my bet is goth with contacts on this one.
 
This is a *tad* off topic, but hey - nice to note UL tropes coming into popular culture (even if Black eyes as signifier of supernatural menace is an already established shorthand...). As I write this, I'm watching the Dario Argento episode of Masters Of Horror Jennifer, in which a police officer kills a guy who's trying to chop up a girl with a cleaver. About to untie her, he notices that she has....BIG BLACK EYES. (Instantly recalling this strand, I know he's about to make a dumb move). He seems convinced she's an innocent in the whole affair, but clearly she isn't - Don't know whats up with her yet... Anyway, I'm basically posting this in order to share with the world my joy at his teenage son's line: 'She's got a great rack on her...You know, for a Morlock.'

Class.
 
Mantis aliens in dreams

Bannik said:
Do "abductees" ever have nightmares of Praying Mantises (note they have black eyes)?
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Not an abductee, but last night I had a dream in which praying mantises (who were, indeed, aliens) dressed in black hooded robes were here on earth going from person to person trying to get anyone's attention; but no one seemed to see them. The mantises were saying things like, "Hello, we're not from your planet" and the like.

Finally, one of the mantis stopped someone, and said "A priest and a rabbi enter a bar..." That got the person's attention.

I woke up laughing.

Probably a combination of too much "Dead Like Me" and this forum.
 
Re: Mantis aliens in dreams

ElishevaBarsabe said:
Not an abductee, but last night I had a dream in which praying mantises (who were, indeed, aliens) dressed in black hooded robes....
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You have my profound sympathy. :shock:
 
Perhaps they were just wearing novelty contact lenses? A few years back you could hardly walk out your front door without meeting kids with horrible fake eyes. There was a particular disturbing white pair which removed the iris altogether, leaving just a small black pupil on a completely white eye. Very scary.
 
Jerry_B said:
I think the originator of this story may have some psychological problems, or stresses. Not that he's mad or anything like that, but it seems as if there is something coming out from his subconcious. And I'm not saying there's anything actually 'wrong' with him mentally, but it sounds to me as if something is being thrown up by his subconcious. For what reasons, one can only guess.
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Do you think that, while you don't think he is exactly mad, that it sounds like something is coming up from his subconcious?
 
Wembley. Sorry mate but can you explain what you meant a few pages back when you said there was something a bit sinister in what he was saying. It seemed that you were alluding to their being some kind of sinister, sexual point in the guys writing.

Sorry, I just really don't understand where you are getting that from. I'm not saying you are wrong of course, just that I haven't noticed it, so can you explain exactly why you feel this way, please?

Thankyou.

p.s. A couple of people agreed with you, that is why I am wondering what it was that I have missed.
 
triplesod said:
Wembley. Sorry mate but can you explain what you meant a few pages back when you said there was something a bit sinister in what he was saying. It seemed that you were alluding to their being some kind of sinister, sexual point in the guys writing.
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As I said -

...they're obeying laws for blackmailing adults in a world that that looks suspiciously at potential child abusers. If you would have to explain to the police that the reason why the kids are in your car is that you invited them in then you are in a world of trouble.
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Looks like a paedophile trap. If you invite kids into your car and/or give them money 'for a movie' which they have already missed, then you are setting yourself up for blackmail.

Or maybe they were just rent boys looking for new customer, who knows?

The way the journo says he felt 'confused' and 'unearthly' makes me suspect there may have been something going on in his head which he did not want to admit.
 
I see. You could be right.

Thanks for the explanation Wembley!
 
Another little BE"K" story. Just another version or a real occurrence?
http://www.warphead.com/modules/wfsecti ... icleid=497


Author: DarkBrownBeauty
Published: 2006/9/10
Read 950 times
Size 747 bytes Printer Friendly Page Tell a Friend

This is gonna be short and sweet!!!
Well this happened last year sometime to me. It was my now ex-boyfriend and we had just gotten into a very ugly argument and he decides that he wants to put his hand on me (jerk). Well anyways after he shows how big of a boy he is, he wants to try and apologize and wanting to have sex w/me. I was upset but also I loved him, so I went along with it. Now I don't know what happen next is because I was still mad at him or if it just showed how evil he really was. But in the process I opened my eyes to look in his and all I saw was darkness. I immediately told him to get off and pushed him away. I didn't touch him for the next couple of days because I was afraid of what would of happen next.
 
She didn't touch him for the next two days huh. Did she get used to the idea after that? I wonder if he had "manifested any other evil characteristics before that day. Strange story.
 
I have been looking at various UFO sites (i.e.: UFO DIGEST-posted August 28th) with regards to reports of BLACK EYED KIDS.

These are 2 teenaged boys (one usually taller and older) who terrorize victims after attempting one ruse or another to gain entry into the home or car.

They cause intense fear not only for the creepy "vibes" they project but because their eyes are COMPLETELY BLACK!! NO WHITES!! NO IRIS!!
NADA!!!

Theories are that they are either Gray Aliens in disquise or the latest incarnation of the MEN IN BLACK.

Has anyone had a first-hand experience with them or heard a story about them???
 
And here is the very Thread, uncannily bearing EXACTLY THE SAME TITLE, only not in block capitals.

Get all your Black Eyed Kids info. here folks! :D
 
Brian Bethel's story does indeed seem to subvert the classic male predator M.O. I doubt that he has any subconscious urges of THAT kind- it would be utterly foolish to go and post them online if he did. The movie mentioned places his account at about 1995/6, but I'd question whether those boys would have been old enough to get in to a movie of that sort although wikipedia doesn't give the age classification.

I would agree, though that the style of writing reminds me strongly of a dramatization of a true, non-fortean account mixed with some supernatural elements. What strikes me especially is the contrast he highlights between 'normal' children (the speech he describes wasn't typical of me or many of my friends who would have been around that age when his account takes place, in a word it seems determined to come across as innocent) and that of the BEK which does serve to make the whole encounter more menacing.

I'm also interested in his portrayal of himself as almost unable to prevent himself from opening the car door to the boys, which does call into mind themes relating to unwanted sexual desires. But it IS interesting that the girl's account of her boyfriend going black eyed also links it to sex and some form of power.
 
Having read through this thread, I have a hypothesis that seems pretty on the mark to *me*, but it's more or less a mish-mash of existing ideas already brought up.

I figure that a portion of the "sightings" were "real" -- in that the witnesses believe themselves to be telling the truth -- and a portion are obvious hoaxes. I also figure that some of the "real" sightings were independent, and some were primed by reading about the experiences of others. I mean, geez, reading about it myself primed me to expect the next person I saw to be a BEK.

That said, the ease of priming (as well as the memetic virility and the creepiness factor) probably has the same cause as the high potentiality of independent sightings. The bits of the story that seem to be similar across tellings are the kind of thing that has high psychological impact: eyes that "aren't quite right" have a great impact because humans use eyes to determine gaze direction and to determine what's going on outside of their gaze (try looking over someone's shoulder while talking to them and you'll see what I mean: often, they get the feeling that something is behind them; it's been posited that we use arrow symbols because they resemble eyes), children &c are creepy for the reasons mentioned earlier (people are often paranoid about being taken advantage of by illusions: shapeshifters and anything 'evil' posing as something 'good' or 'innocent' are scary because they get around our normal methods of determining safety, and they are viscerally scary because those methods of determining safety by looks and actions are imprinted into us during infancy), and the bunches of obvious continuity errors (the kids are obviously unrelated but have the same 'mother', they want to catch a movie that is nearly over with, &c) are signs that 'something' is wrong -- that 'something' can be given a more obvious physical representation later, which might explain why he didn't actually determine *what* was wrong until afterwards.

So I imagine that the independent sightings are probably mostly like this: something is obviously wrong about these people, but it's something that normally isn't considered consciously (a good example is how creeped out people get by anyone whose eye movement doesn't actually match what it "should" be, since people rarely consider what the proper eye movement during a conversation is; most people will tell you something entirely incorrect, which, if actually done, would creep the hell out of them, if you ask), then the black eyes are stuck on the memory later in order to give a better physical telltale sign, which hypothetically could be used in similar situations in real time (this kind of synesthia is far more common that one might think -- humans construct a vast amount of their reality out of whole cloth and conventions, and without this projection of one's internal model onto the external world, we probably would have a hell of a time doing much of anything, especially things like manipulating objects in 3d space and sitting on chairs -- and as a survival trait, it's pretty good: you narrowly escape some predator who is really good at blending in by picking up some minor detail, and in the future the minor detail is replaced in sensory input with a major detail so that it's harder to miss).
 
Black-Eyed Kid at the Door
Author’s note: In the following encounter with a Black-Eyed Kid, the name Beth Stringfield and Ellen are pseudonyms. The woman requested anonymity because she’s worried for the safety of her children.

The knock on the door was strange.

On a day in early April, Beth Stringfield, a stay-at-home mom in Lawson, Mo., was in the kitchen making lunch when she heard a knock on the front door. No one comes to the Stringfield’s front door.

“We usually use the back door and everyone we know knows that and we hardly ever get visitors at the front,” she said. “I opened the door and there was a little girl standing there. I did not recognize her.”

Lawson is a small town of about 2,354 people where everyone knows everyone.

“She was about seven years old and she was starring down at her shoes,” Stringfield said. “She had blond hair and was dressed in an antique-type dingy white dress with blue embroidery birds at the edges.”

Stringfield opened the screen door and knelt to talk to the girl. She was worried the girl was hurt or in danger.

“She looked at my hands and said, ‘I need help. Can I come inside, please?’” Stringfield said. She was so polite and spoke so well. She did not sound as if she was from around town. I suddenly felt very afraid.”

Stringfield looked up and down the street, but no one was around.

“I looked past her thinking the fear I felt must be someone after her or that her parents or someone must be upset with me talking to her,” she said. “Thoughts raced through my mind quickly and I somehow could not think very clearly all of the sudden.”

Stringfield looked back at the girl preparing to ask where her parents were and where she lived when she noticed the little girl’s eyes.

“She looked at me and I immediately noticed that her eyes seemed wrong or something,” she said. “Like they were ink. Like someone had poured ink in her eyes. They were not normal kids eyes. They were coal black and black from rim-to-rim just staring.”

The girl again demanded to come inside.

“I could hear a kind of fake sweetness in her voice. She had a little girl voice but had an adult vocabulary and force about her,” Stringfield said. “I immediately stood up and knew I needed to protect myself and my girls inside and started to close the door.”

The girl asked Stringfield what she’d done wrong; why Stringfield wouldn’t invite her in.

“That is when my five-year-old daughter came into the living room and I knew that she should not look at her,” Stringfield said. “I closed the door on this little girl and I locked it. I scooped up Ellen and ran to the back door in the kitchen. I locked it and sat down at the table. My 16-month-old was sleeping upstairs and I needed to check her.”

Stringfield ran upstairs on shaking legs, holding Ellen tightly in her arms. The baby was still asleep.

“I got my cell phone out and called my husband and told him about it,” she said. “He thinks my story is crazy.”

But Stringfield knows the little Black-Eyed girl was on her porch and she knows the terror she felt.

“This little girl was real. I had started to feel sorry for her because she had bad breath and really dirty hair,” Stringfield said. “But I somehow know that she meant harm to us. I am not sure if I want to talk too much about it anymore. I would rather forget that it happened at all, but I worry that she will return.”

Hours after the encounter with the Black-Eyed Kid, the fear remains.

“I won't let the girls play outside now,” she said. “I have not gone out by myself to the store or anything. I still feel that dread, that sense of fear I felt emanating from the girl on my porch. I somehow knew that if I had let her in, that I would have regretted it and my girls and I would have been in some sort of real danger.”

Copyright 2009 by Jason Offutt
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Source
 
I went on that site and "voted" what BECs are most likely to be and went for "imagination", it didn't surprise me much that the highest vote was for "demons"...[considering it is an american site]
That says it all about their readership. :roll:
 
Re: Black-eyed Kids

MrRING said:

"WE CAN'T COME IN UNLESS YOU TELL US IT'S OKAY. LET ... US .... IN!"
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Very interesting parallels with the new Swedish movie Let the Right One In. The little vampire child can't come in unless invited. Also something a bit like this happens (quoted from the first page of this thread).

DanHigginbottom~ said:
I'm sure I've heard something similar in FT. A guy who met a 10 year old girl by a canal - to cut a long story short, she insisted that he walk with her towards an underpass or something. He went into 'oz factor mode'. Something distracts guy and suddenly filled with inexplicable fear, draws away from girl. Her eyes go all weird and she vanishes. Guy nearly has heart attack with fear.

Disturbing...
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Well, in the film, the girl cries for help underneath an underpass, then attacks her benefactor. Though she doesn't have black eyes, she has HUGE eyes, which are often portrayed in extreme close-up. She also has that gothic look. The film as a whole is very freudian, and the vampire child may reflect some of the adult characters' fears.

The book, which I would dearly like to read, was published in 2004. I wonder if the author was aware of some of these BEK stories, or whether common mythological tropes are coming out of the woodwork.
 
Having to be invited in is quite a vampire tradition, though some vampire movies don;t honor it, and others take it further... iirc in Fright Night the invite also gives immunity to garlic and holy water while in the house.
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
Having to be invited in is quite a vampire tradition, though some vampire movies don;t honor it, and others take it further... iirc in Fright Night the invite also gives immunity to garlic and holy water while in the house.
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That would be The Lost Boys.
 
Time for a little pseudo-psychological nonsense from H_James.

Houses represent security, hence housebreaking being so upsetting, and dreams thereof. So do cars, especially those big 4X4s people drive to feel safe.

So it appears to me that the idea of 'inviting a vampire in' represents causing, through your actions, negative forces to disrupt your personal security, as represented by your house. These forces, at least in vampires (as in rock stars) are represented by darkness and sexuality and stuff, and basically are 'the unknown'.

Is it the same with this guy's BEK's and scary muppets? When these spooky kids are trying to force their way into his car with their hypnotical willpower alone, Brian is scared because his mental security is being threatened. I don't believe the story happened literally as it is told, but even if, a)The black eyes were added for a little colour, b) The black eyes were a misperception because the writer was scared, it was dark, what have you, or c)it's all made up, it hardly matters....
 
Thresholds are important things. I won't have a 'Welcome' mat because I always say that I want final say on what and who enters my house. But that's just another of my little quirks ;)
 
I read both stories and while they are creepy - and will scare the crap outta me if one of them pops into my head when I'm driving home in the dark :shock: - to me it seems pure fiction.

It just sounds like the kinda thing we make up to scare each other round a camp fire. Could be true but if it is I think Wembley's explanation of two goth kids with contact lenses trying to freak out a gullible looking punter seems likely.

Think the point about adults being afraid of kids in the sense that the 'don't talk to strangers' thing has almost been flipped on its head is a valid one. The other day I saw a young girl, about 5-8 maybe, on her own by the side of the road. Not once did I even contemplate stopping to ask if she was okay or where her parents were. As it happened as I passed about 50 metres down the road the mother appeared from down a side path. Had I stopped I would have had a fairly hard time explaining why I had stopped my car.

In a slightly related incident, back when I was at Uni I lived in Darlington. There was a house on a road off the road past the hospital, something Crescent, where there had been a murder. One night after a few too many in the Plastered Parrot a friend and me were walking two lasses back home. We ended up near the 'murder house' and decided to go past. It would have been at least 1am maybe later but as we went past the house we noticed two girls stood in a driveway. We said nothing and walked past and they just stared silently.

We walked on a little and then we heard a whistle, like someone blowing on a kids tin-whistle. We decided to leg it but after about 100 metres or so down the street stopped and laughed at what idiots we were being, then it started again, right next to us. There is no way the girls could have followed us so quickly without us seeing them. We ran right home without stopping.

Never worked out what it was, I assume it was the two girls playing a prank but I've never understood how they could have made the whistling sound like it was following us down the street. Thinking back now the fact that the two girls were stood out by their front gate at such an hour, the fact they just stared silently and watched us walk by and the strange whistling combined to make it seem very surreal and odd. Sure it was nothing paranormal in hindsight.

They didn't have black eyes, not that I remember anyway!
 
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