Myths, Mysteries, & Monsters

Ep. 1 Black Eyed Children

• Hector/ E.L Soto • Season 1 • Episode 1

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Episode 1. The Black Eyed Children


You’re home alone, late at night, your eyelids slowly close as you start to drift into a light sleep. 


A sudden high pitched sound jolts you awake, your doorbell, you jump up not having expected anyone. Looking at the time you know “It’s too late for visitors.”


Making your way to your front door you start to feel your stomach dropping something is wrong. The feeling of emptiness inside you begins to grow. You try not to think much of it as you get closer to your door. 


Through the peephole you see what seems to be the top of two heads, one slightly taller than the other, children?


You open the door slightly, looking down at the children, the pit in your stomach swells. 


Your breathing becomes quicker. 


The hairs on the back of your neck stand as if they were trying to alert you to something you’re not seeing, you look around and see nothing of immediate worry. 


Just two children.


One taller than the other, both paleish skin, jet black hair. Something is off but you can’t tell what it is.


They don’t look at you, they stare straight ahead when the taller one finally speaks, “can we come inside” he asks. His voice holds no emotion, the monotonous request, unnatural for a child.


You don’t know why but you have this fear growing inside of you, something is telling, no yelling at you to not let them in but for a second you almost relent until that fear peaks within you, holding you back.


Before you can say anything the tall boy repeats his request but this time he turns his head, mechanically towards you, and that's when you see it.


His eyes, their eyes


Completely black, void of any other color, void of any feeling. 


A reflex kicks in and you slam your door. 


As you stand there, chest pounding trying to understand what you just saw, your doorbell rings again.

A younger voice rings out still without emotion as if a door hadn’t just been slammed in their faces, “Please mister, we won’t hurt you.”


Another reflex as you turn the lock on the door, ensuring it’s closed as you slowly raise to the peephole, you look out to see nothing.


Who are the Black Eyed Children?


(music)


Welcome to Myths, Mysteries, & Monsters


Today we’re discussing the Black Eyed Children, a recent phenomena? Maybe, or maybe they’ve been around for a lot longer than we think. 

The origin of these specific types of Black Eyed Children can be traced back to a Texas reporter in 1998 regarding an occurrence that happened in 1996. 


Brian Bethel had spent a late evening out and decided to stop in a parking lot by a movie theater to write out a check. Being so enthralled in this activity he didn’t notice 2 young boys approach his car…. If they even approached or just manifested is something we should consider…


The older boy tapped on his window, immediately he described a fear in his soul growing as he rolled down his window. 


The older boy, who Bethel refers to as the spokesman, asked for a ride to the movie theater for his brother and himself, assuring Bethel they were just children and didn’t have a gun. Now if horror movies or stories have taught you anything, it’s if someone or something is trying to assure you of something within its first few sentences, especially that it means no harm then it definitely means you harm.


After asking what film the boys intended to see the older boy responded with their intention to watch the last showing of Mortal Kombat. 


Bethel being the careful reporter he seems to be realized the last showing had already started and it would be too late for them to get a ride and still catch the film.


The older boy began to get frustrated at this refusal and stated they are not able to enter his car without his permission. At this point Bethel broke eye contact with the boys and when he looked back their eyes had become completely black.


Smartly Bethel peeled out of the parking lot.


Now I would like to point out that I read all of these stories with a lot of skepticism and part of this show is to try to find the truth behind these stories. 


So let’s break down these stories of The Black Eyed Children and see if we can find any hints in history that point to these stories being just fiction.

We’ll look at 3 parts and then finally look at the theories as to what these black eyed children could be:


  1. Black Eyes
  2. Children
  3. Theories


Part 1 - Black Eyes


“I met this six-year old child with this blank, pale, emotionless face, and the blackest eyes... the devil’s eyes” a quote by Dr. Loomis regarding Michael Myers from John Carpenter’s Halloween 1978


In research for this episode I wondered how easy it would be to find references to black eyes being related to evil in other sources of media. To my surprise, prior to the mid to late 1990’s it was almost impossible. Are there things I may have missed? Sure, but many evil monsters or myths either made no mention of the eyes or had different color eyes, gold, green, red, etc. After the mid 1990’s it’s become a trope, shows like Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, almost any films regarding demons or ghosts now use black eyes to signify evil. I couldn’t find any definitive instance where black eyes were used for evil in the media or in demonology.


That is until I stumbled upon the quote I read earlier. Halloween was in 1978 almost 20 years prior to Bethel's story or the rise of Black eyed children stories. While this clearly doesn’t disprove any of the stories floating around the internet this shows a precedent for black eyes being used as evil.


I then followed this path to find many instances where the color black has been used to signify evil in the past. Light versus dark. Heaven’s bright lights, hell’s dark black corridors. Going as far  back to Greek Mythology Zues lived among the heavens while Hades in the underworld was imagined as a realm of darkness.


Women wear white to their weddings to signify purity or innocence. Villains in movies often wear black as an easy way to show the darkness in their hearts. You have white knights and black nights, white magic, black magic the list goes on and on.


Therefore it’s not a stretch that at some point throughout history the change of eye color to black from white, blue, green brown would signify evil. But why the eyes?


A common phrase is “the eyes are the window to the soul” in a metaphorical psychology actually backs this up. Your eyes say a lot, emotions flow through your eyes, shifty eyes show nervousness, a real smile includes the eyes, when your aroused or scared your pupils dilate.


So what if you couldn’t see the eyes of the person looking at you, what if you couldn’t tell what they were thinking? If they were just massive voids of blackness blocking the window to your soul?


Part 2 - Children


“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown” - H.P. Lovecraft


Why are children so frightening? What is it about seeing an evil child that makes some of us more terrified of them? 

Children are a staple in many classic horror stories, The Omen, Children of the Corn, The Exorcist, but why? Why children?


As adults or parents, we’re supposed to care for children, be their guardians and protectors yet when the tables are turned it creates a break in our reality.


It’s why many of these stories involving black eyed children are effective, it’s a juxtaposition of what we should be doing to help the children compared to the feeling that something at your doorstep in the middle of the night is something to be terrified about.


Children are also viewed as the purest of innocence but when they are evil ones it strikes us deep in our subconscious. It becomes... creepy. 


We were all children of course, to be confronted with what we once were in the most twisted version of it must seep it’s way into the fear of what is wrong. It taps into what’s called the fear of ambiguity.


When we are presented with a threat, something we know can hurt us we can feel threatened but there is a lack of a creepiness factor in it. When the threat is gone we know what we were afraid of. 


But when we are confronted with someone or something where we can’t pinpoint exactly what it is that is causing that fear to rise within us, that’s when things become terrifying. If we don’t know why we were scared to begin with, how can we protect ourselves from it?


But if these stories of the Black Eyed Children are true, maybe that’s why these creatures take the form of children in the first place.


Part 3 - Theories


First we’ll take a look at some supernatural theories as to what these Black Eyed Children are;

Let’s break down what we know from them.

 They appear as children most of the time

 They require permission to enter your home or vehicle “you must let them in”


As for the children, this may be a simple ploy to gain trust. Many stories of the black eyed children see one of the children echoing the sentiment of being just children.


But they do appear as children which would discredit many types of monsters that cannot shape shift. It’s still a long list of monsters and demons that fit the bill though, some include, skin-walker/shape-shifter, doppelgangers, changelings, Tiyanaks, vampires, and my choice for most likely being a black eyed child, Cambions.


Let’s narrow that list down by looking at the second qualification of our monster this week, needing permission to enter your home.


Immediately this is reminiscent of a vampire but demons also require permission. From my research I could not find any instances where the rest of the listed monsters/cryptids are documented in folklore to need permission. 


This narrows our list down to Vampires, Tiyanaks ( a type of vampiric monster from philiphino folklore so we’ll absorb that into a wider Vampire net) and Cambions. 


Many of us know what Vampires are and, shameless plus; we have an episode on Vampires coming in a few weeks. In folklore Vampires require permission to enter your home, without it they cannot pass the threshold into your home. They will at times try to deceive you to allow them in. 


But Cambions are a less widely known type of demon. They were first mentioned in the 13th century as the offspring of incubi demons. Incubi being the male version of a succubus demon. Later mentioned in the 19th century Infernal Dictionary as the children of demons as well as mentioned in other works has demon-human hybrids. 


Hybrids of monsters or demons mixed with humans may need an episode all their own but Cambion’s seem to fit the description of what we’re looking for here.


Demons are sometimes documented to require permission to enter your soul, how that permission is defined can get muddy. Sometimes just having some evil in your heart is giving a demon permission enough.


Now we’ve narrowed it down as much as I think is possible as far as supernatural theories go. Either these are child versions of vampires or possibly Cambions.


But now let’s look at this phenomena through a more scientific approach; throughout history whenever we humans are met with things we don’t understand we fear them. We run or we run them out, we make up stories, legends, myths, to make sure descendants fear them as well.


On top of that when we don’t understand a biological change, a deformity, or even a cultural practice we tend to fear them instead of trying to understand them. 


This leads me to a rare genetic vision disorder called Aniridia. In cases of aniridia the colored part of a person’s eye may be poorly developed and misshapen. This would cause the pupil, the black part of the eye to envelope a larger portion of the eye.


While the entire eye wouldn’t appear black a large portion in some cases of Aniridia would. In the dark of the night is it possible that a person seeing a sufferer of Aniridia would confuse this? Maybe.


While I don’t think this is what happened in the case of Brian Bethel’s story, in cases dating far back centuries of demon children it is entirely possible a child born with this unfortunate affliction would be feared and not understood. 


Many diseases were thought to be the works of the devil or God’s retribution, it is not entirely out of the realm of possibilities uninformed individuals would attribute black eyes to equate demonic possession or disease.


We, humans, create and weave stories out of what we fear. We care and recognize the innocence of children but when that status quo is threatened that is when we cower. 


The thought of a child at your doorstep in the middle of the night is not one anyone should be used to, it elicits fear in us all. We are not sure if the child is okay, if there is someone coming after them, if they are running. Every instinct in us wants to help.


To be there for a seemingly helpless child.


But something within us is yelling, warning us to be careful. We are afraid and we don’t know why. Until we see their eyes.  


The world is full of myths, unexplained mysteries, monsters lurking in the night. We think we know what’s around the corner but most of the time we have no clue.


For remember, we tend to fear what we don’t know.


Thank you for joining me on today’s episode of Myths, Mysteries, & Monsters!

Please subscribe, rate, and review and make sure to come back next week as we’ll be back with a mysterious case involving the murder of a family, strange footprints, and one hundred suspects.


My name is Hector, story, script, and research all done by E.L Soto. Sources are in the show notes for further reading.


And remember, always look behind you.