For a few years now, a collection of strange stories about black eyed kids has been bouncing around the Internet via paranormal forums and supernatural chat rooms. These stories have a single originating point–a creepy experience reported by journalist Brian Bethel on January 16, 1998. Brian claims he was approached in his car by two children whose eyes were all black, meaning there was no white in their corneas. These children insisted Brian let them into his parked car, claiming they needed a ride to a telephone.

Brian claims he was overcome with a feeling of sheer panic, as though he were being hunted by a sinister predator. The more fearful he became the more insistent the kids became that he let them them in.



This story has since multiplied, reported by dozens of others: a woman who lives alone, who claims two kids knocked on her door at 11 PM demanding she let them in to use her restroom; a soldier alone in a Marines barracks, who found his courage under fire when two BEKs knocked at his door in the middle of the night; a lone camper, who claims he spent all night huddled in his tent terrified after two black eyed children randomly appeared in the woods and insisted he let them inside his tent.

The similarities in all the stories are as follows:

~It’s always two kids at night.

~They always have completely jet black eyes.

~The kids seem unnatural and almost alien in disposition.

~The kids repeatedly ask to be let inside, growing more and more hostile throughout the encounter.

The way we see it, there are three over-arching explanations for this phenomenon: paranormal, hoax, and cult.



Paranormal

The paranormal explanation is the one most often cited. Due to the lack of physical evidence, few paranormal researchers have claimed to believe this story 100%. However, there are many who think the black eyed kid legend has eerie similarities with a variety of traditional paranormal classifications.

Vampires

Vampires traditionally have black eyes, especially directly prior to a feeding. Vampires also traditionally ask to be let in, a very consistent characteristic of the black eyed kids.



Demons

Sure, why not? Make them demons. All of the people who have reported experiences of BEKs recount feeling sheer terror in their presence, irrational terror that would normally not come about due to merely being approached by children.



Spirits

Perhaps BEKs are the ghosts of deceased children, spirits who have lost their way. They don’t know they’re dead and are thus asking for help, but they’re no longer human and thus appear strange both in appearance and demeanor.



Hoax

All it would take for a couple of kids to keep this myth going is buying some black contact lenses and having the disposition to not crack up laughing during the ruse. The hoax explanation would appear to be the most likely one for people not inclined to believe in the paranormal. However, if this is a copycat hoax, a prank perpetuated by bored teens on a Friday night, it seems strange that there is not one reported incidence of a BEK breaking character and smiling or laughing. Even the teen vampire heartthrobs in the Twilight series aren’t that good at character acting.



Cult

With all the buckwild cults out there, it would not surprise us at all if there was one that involved devious kids. In some ways, this is just as terrifying as the demon explanation, and far more likely. There are hundreds of thousands of runaway children and they often get swept up into gangs and illegal activity.

What if it goes further than this? What if there’s a deranged serial killer out there who hypnotizes children, inducting them into his/her ‘family’ and then unleashing them upon the public? One could argue–and, in fact, many are–that the government does this on a daily basis.

What’s to say the black eyed kids aren’t a part of, or symbolic of, an experiment gone wrong, or an occult project cut loose?