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The Child Eater

A

Anonymous

Guest
B K
I grew up very happily in an old farmhouse in the Gordano Valley, near Bristol, England. My childhood days were spent building dams and playing happily with my friends. Family life was very stable and I had a care-free existence with two loving parents. The only bad part was sleeping. Night after night I would have the same terrible dream.

Full story...

Link is dead. See post below for complete text.
 
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Have you carried out any historic research into this area? Perhaps there are records of missing children or a record of a house once existing on this spot! Might be worth a look :)
 
erm...

sorry to say this but...just because the dream was the only one you have ever had featuring a real place does not nesesarly mean that is something other than your sleeping mind constructing experence from psychological states.

Still if you did find out that there where evil child eaters in the neighbourhood then I'll eat my nephew.

Just a thought. Wouldn't such people have left their mark on the local stock of legends?
 
On the Fortean side.......

Rather than this being an actual local event, there is the possablility of some sort of UL of a child eater in dreams, similar to the Old Hag Syndrome? I wonder if the authour has done a search for such info on the net? Perhaps type in dreams+child eater, that might turn something similar up? If it's never been heard of before then it can just be put down to a dream, if not, then at least there will be confirmation of others with the same experiance.
 
A powerful archetype indeed, commonly known round these parts (South Yorks/Derbyshire) as Black Annis.

Odd side note: near on 30 years of semi-sceptical Fortean study and I still had an urge to cross myself after typing that name. Just goes to show...
 
DanHigginbottom said:
A powerful archetype indeed, commonly known round these parts (South Yorks/Derbyshire) as Black Annis.
Click to expand...

Tell us more.
 
Christ I haven't heard her name in a while. Don't you be upsetting her now.

:eek!!!!:
 
The link in the first post doesn't seem to work.

And while I'm whingeing, do we really need links for this IHTM stuff? More than once, having read what's posted here, I've clicked the link to find only a few more sentences to the story.
Why not post it all here?
 
Annis Horribilus

Black Annis?
I just got the spooks writing that name there too and have absolutely no knowledge of her/him whatsoever....
More please!:)
 
Without wanting to go into it too deeply (it gives me the heebie-jeebies as well!), Black Annis is, I believe, one of the nastier manifestations of the goddess Hekate. I could be completely wrong, but I think there's a reference to her in "The Black Alchemist" by Andrew Collins, if you can still get hold of a copy. Now there's a book that will scare s*** out of you!
 
Just did a little search of Google there, and found http://www.pantheon.org/articles/b/black_annis.html and more detailed info at http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/folklore/blackannis.html

Also, Solas sing a song called "Black Annis" on their "The Edge Of Silence" album, which from the lyrics would appear to be along the same lines, as you can see:

When Annis built this cage
I saw the blueprint on the table
But I was too young to run
She lured me from my play
To her clandestine domain
To tend her illicit garden

That's only the first verse, but I think that makes it clear the subject is the same!
 
I always heard that Black Annis was a localized and nastified form of the Celtic goddess Danu.
 
Black Annis:

Turns out she was origionaly a medival prioris who was much loved in the local aria for her knidness - especaly towards children.

She was canonised and then when the reformation came she was made into a evil child eater by prodistant satarists.

Her name was Agnes Scott and she's buried in Swithland church. Send me some pictures if you go!
 
BTW my source for the above was:

The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft by Ronald Hutton (published by OUP incase your intrested.)
 
Spading

While I suspect that the experiences which opened this thread were most likely nothing more than exceptionally frightening childhood nightmares (which can be bad enough, as I remember from personal experience), it might still prove worthwhile to go out to that "15 foot by 15 foot" plot of land with a spade, a tablespoon and a toothbrush, a couple of buckets and a solidly-framed window screen.
 
The Virgin Queen~ said:
"She was canonised and then when the reformation came she was made into a evil child eater by prodistant satarists."

What in the world are "Protestant Satanists"? It's a strange juxtaposition of terms.
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I would guess she meant Protestant satirists, OTR. :)
 
Ah, dont' you miss Her Majesty?

I was thinking she was referring to the 16th century Protestants who made the Devil an active, vibrant presence in modern life, often apparently more involved and powerful in human affairs than God.

But with the dyslexia and her complex thought processes, without her around to confirm interpretations, we'll never be sure. And that's a shame.
 
Thanks

Leaferne said:
"I would guess she meant Protestant satirists, OTR." :)
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Leaferne, thanks much for pointing this out. You are obviously correct, but it hadn't occurred to me.

Hey, I have no problem with dyslexia. I myself have Obsessive- Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Asperger Syndrome (sometimes called "Park Avenue autism") and Clinical Depression. I co-lead an OCD support group which draws members from parts of three US states.

Old Time Radio (George Wagner)
 
PeniG said:
But with the dyslexia and her complex thought processes, without her around to confirm interpretations, we'll never be sure. And that's a shame.
Click to expand...

I imagine it's safe to say she meant satirists because, yaknow, she actually did SPELL satirist.
 
The Virgin Queen~ said:
The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft by Ronald Hutton (published by OUP incase your intrested.)
Click to expand...

Great book, that - among others - debunks the myth that Wiccan craft is based on ancient traditions. It traces the roots back to early 19th century.
 
Protestant Satarists

The phrase "Hocus Pocus" was a product of those early Protestant Satarists.

It is a corruption of "Hoc Est Corpus" ("Here is the Body") from the Offeratory of the Roman Catholic Mass, and indeed the most sacred wordsof that rite ("the Core of the Mass").

I remember being admonished by nuns in Roman Catholic grade school in the early 1950s not to say "Hocus Pocus."

P. S. Maybe this is just my declinining eyesight, but "satarist" and "satanist" look almost exactly the same to me on a standard computer screen. That is, I can't perceive much difference between "ri" and "n."
 
Agnes connection isn't all that solid

The Virgin Queen~ said:
Black Annis:

Turns out she was origionaly a medival prioris who was much loved in the local aria for her knidness - especaly towards children.

She was canonised and then when the reformation came she was made into a evil child eater by prodistant satarists.

Her name was Agnes Scott and she's buried in Swithland church. Send me some pictures if you go!
Click to expand...

This is one hypothesis, but one not universally agreed upon. For starters, it seems to have originated as a supposition by the poet Robert Graves, whose speculations regarding folklore aren't always on the mark.
 
A most frustrating thread with snippets of real interest. I wish that we could retrieve the initial post.
 
uair01 said:
Great book, that - among others - debunks the myth that Wiccan craft is based on ancient traditions. It traces the roots back to early 19th century.
Click to expand...
Have to disagree, many traditions in my family from both mother's and father's families ( from different places in Europe) which could be called sympathetic magic and herb lore. Charms, amulets, protection rituals, all layered onto Christianity and emerged as patron saints. Circles of protection, grace over meals, salt for purification and protection, the oil and water ritual on Christmas Eve, red ribbons to ward off the evil eye, the decoration ( symbolic feeding) of statuary and an altar of household gods, may altars for the Goddes Mary, lucky stones (Quartz) in a pocket. In fact the 'lucky stones ' or wishing stones I took to school for show,and tell and the resultant dismay of our nun began my slow but inevitable move away from Christianity and back to the traditions of my pagan ancestors.
 
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The link in post #1 is long dead. Here's the complete text, salvaged from the Wayback Machine ...

-------------------------------------------

THE CHILD EATER

B K

I grew up very happily in an old farmhouse in the Gordano Valley, near Bristol, England. My childhood days were spent building dams and playing happily with my friends. Family life was very stable and I had a care-free existence with two loving parents. The only bad part was sleeping. Night after night I would have the same terrible dream.

Just up behind the old farmhouse was a little track that widened out with a little cottage on the left and then the rolling fields behind. To the right of the cottage was just an open area with a few trees separating it from our orchard, no buildings - just a piece of flat earth about 15 feet by 15 feet.

Only, in my dream there was a little wooden shack there. In my dream I would be magnetically drawn towards this shack and although I wanted to run back down the track home I could not stop my body from slowly stepping ever forward. As I got nearer a horrific looking woman would lean out of the window and I knew she wanted to do something horrible to me. As I got closer I could see little leg bones and arm bones sticking out of the ground as the snaggle-toothed woman lured me in. I would always wake up screaming just before she could get her hands on me. Even in daylight the place would give me the creeps and if I was on my own I would always run the rest of the way home.

I only remembered the dream a few months ago for the first time since I had them. I must have put it down to just being a very bad recurring dream and forgotten about it. You might think so too apart from one thing. Now, at the age of 28, I can categorically state that I NEVER dream about real places, they are always fictional places from the creation of my own mind.

Even when I dream about work we are always in a different unrecognisable building. I truly believe that sometime in the past that place did have this shack on it and there was an evil couple that lived there and did unspeakable things to children. I am generally a very rational person and I have mulled this over in my head for the last few months trying to find some other explanation. I have had other dreams where I want to run and my legs feel like lead but never again have I dreamt of a real place.

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SALVAGED FROM: https://web.archive.org/web/2002120...rteantimes.com:80/happened/childkillers.shtml
 
It would certainly be interesting if we could find out from B K where this 12 by 12 foot patch actually is. I mean there's only one way to really know if it's plausible that a structure had stood on that site, ad that good old fashioned research. :)

I wonder if they're still around on the boards. Might be a long shot, but you never know.

Black Annis, though? That's a Leicestershire legend centralised around a cave in the Dane Hills.

Heck she's even got a wikipedia page these days... :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Annis
 
EnolaGaia said:
The link in post #1 is long dead. Here's the complete text, salvaged from the Wayback Machine ...

-------------------------------------------

THE CHILD EATER

B K

I grew up very happily in an old farmhouse in the Gordano Valley, near Bristol, England. My childhood days were spent building dams and playing happily with my friends. Family life was very stable and I had a care-free existence with two loving parents. The only bad part was sleeping. Night after night I would have the same terrible dream.

Just up behind the old farmhouse was a little track that widened out with a little cottage on the left and then the rolling fields behind. To the right of the cottage was just an open area with a few trees separating it from our orchard, no buildings - just a piece of flat earth about 15 feet by 15 feet.

Only, in my dream there was a little wooden shack there. In my dream I would be magnetically drawn towards this shack and although I wanted to run back down the track home I could not stop my body from slowly stepping ever forward. As I got nearer a horrific looking woman would lean out of the window and I knew she wanted to do something horrible to me. As I got closer I could see little leg bones and arm bones sticking out of the ground as the snaggle-toothed woman lured me in. I would always wake up screaming just before she could get her hands on me. Even in daylight the place would give me the creeps and if I was on my own I would always run the rest of the way home.

I only remembered the dream a few months ago for the first time since I had them. I must have put it down to just being a very bad recurring dream and forgotten about it. You might think so too apart from one thing. Now, at the age of 28, I can categorically state that I NEVER dream about real places, they are always fictional places from the creation of my own mind.

Even when I dream about work we are always in a different unrecognisable building. I truly believe that sometime in the past that place did have this shack on it and there was an evil couple that lived there and did unspeakable things to children. I am generally a very rational person and I have mulled this over in my head for the last few months trying to find some other explanation. I have had other dreams where I want to run and my legs feel like lead but never again have I dreamt of a real place.

--------------------------------------------

SALVAGED FROM: https://web.archive.org/web/2002120...rteantimes.com:80/happened/childkillers.shtml
Click to expand...

Interesting story and thank you @EnolaGaia for all the sterling work you're doing with these old threads.

Not sure if 'never dreaming about real places' means anything though? It could be that something unspeakable did happen there in the past but equally it could be a made-up construct in this person's mind... which would take us back to dreaming of real things...

... because if their workplace in dreams is a different building, who's to say that dreaming of this patch of land with a building on it (when in reality there is no building there) is any different to that? Both are equally unreal.


Apologies if none of the above makes sense, I know what I'm trying to say but it's not coming out right.
 
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