You are home alone one night and you hear a knock at the door. You think for a moment if you are waiting on an order from Amazon.com, if it could be anyone of your friends, family, or that annoying ex, but no, it can’t be. You didn’t even order a pizza. So you ignore the knock. A few seconds go by in silence and you feel a sense of relief It was nothing. Wrong person, wrong house, nothing, and you settle back into the folds of your sofa and hit play on that long awaited B movie you have been hoping to finish on Netflix. Then, the knock returns, louder this time, and it’s enough to jolt you into a panic. As you cautiously approach the door there’s another knock, pleading you to please hurry and open up. You’re smart and you know not to just open wide the door without first seeing who it is. You take a peek out the window and you see them standing there, two small children. It’s children after all, children are innocent aren’t they? They can’t possibly be a threat. You crack open the door and you immediately regret it because the children seem odd, awkward. Their clothes are strange, but it’s their eyes that cause your hair to stand on end. Their eyes are completely black. When they ask to come inside you hesitate for a brief second, but quickly you slam the door close.

What I described above has been reported across hundreds of communities in the United States. These children, with the fully black eyes, are called Black Eyed Children or Black Eyed Kids, BEK’s, by paranormal investigators. Whether or not BEK’s have been reported outside of the U.S. I’m not sure. If so, let us know at twitter @burialdaybooks.

The reports are similar in all accounts. A person is home alone. They hear a knock on the door and then another. The knocking becomes persistent. In most cases the person home alone looks out of a window first and notices a child at their doorstep. Typically, there are two children who appear to be between the ages of 8 and 10. The children are pale and stand still at the door once they notice someone is watching them. They have their heads down so that their faces are unseen. When the person opens the door the children ask to come inside, and say that their parents will be there soon. The children stick to this script and will ask only if they can come inside or say only that their parents will be there soon if any additional questions are asked. People have claimed that the moment they open the door they are washed in a feeling of dread. Some people have claimed that the children are plainly dressed in period clothing, perhaps from the 17th or 18th century. They have been mistaken as being Mennonite or Amish children. All reports claim that the immediate impression of the children is that they seem off and avoid making eye contact, but when they finally do it’s terrifying. The children have huge black eyes, no whites, just fully black eyes. Typically, it’s then when most people slam the door and call the police, or slam the door and reach for a weapon.

Many of these sightings have been reported on message boards and chat rooms. Paranormal investigator David Weatherly wrote a book about BEKs titled Black Eyed Children. In an interview on paranormal podcast Coast to Coast AM, Weatherly said “It seems as if the whole goal of these encounters is to create this high level of fear in the victim.”

It’s been suspected that BEKs are either demonic in nature or alien.

Now, what happens when you actually open the door to a BEK? One woman claimed that her husband let two BEKs into their home, and it wasn’t until they were inside that they noticed the children’s eyes. The husband immediately had a dizzy spell, a nose bleed, and the children ran off and hid in the bathroom, and then – the power went out. The children appeared in the hallway shortly after and said that their parents had arrived. They fled out the front door and when the husband and wife looked outside they saw two very tall men standing outside in black suits standing next to a black car and all four of them drove off. The woman claims that afterward several of her pets went missing or died, her husband developed an aggressive form of skin cancer only seen with heavy tanning bed users – which her husband was not one, and other odd and horrifying things have occurred, and she blames all of their misfortune on the BEKs.

So, are these BEKs just a made up paranormal tale? Are they just a creepypasta taking over the internet? Or, are there some little demonic children running around knocking on your door hoping you let them in? And, who are their parents? Are these the infamous MIBs, Men In Black who were famously spotted in Point Pleasant around the time of the Mothman sightings and the collapse of the Silver Bridge?

Who knows?

-Gravedigger