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María Arteaga González opened her door after hearing incessant knocking. Her home was located in the modest Colonia el Bosque neighborhood of Tijuana, the largest city of the Mexican state of Baja California right across the border from San Diego. It was the late afternoon in March of 2016 and María was getting ready to start dinner as she always did at that time. The two children on her doorstep were about 10 years old, a boy and a girl, with their heads slightly downward. They were wearing what appeared to be handmade clothing. From what María could tell, the children had very pale skin and very even features. Even though they spoke perfect Spanish, she knew that these kids were not from her neighborhood. María thought to call her three children to the door who were about the same age as the two standing before her, but something told her not to. She then asked if they were lost and where their parents were. The two strange children replied with their original request for water and permission to enter the house. María asked them again if they were lost and the girl of the two repeated, “No, we want to come in.” María was at a loss as to what to do. It was when she grabbed her phone to call her husband that the two children finally looked up. What María saw filled her with terror. After making eye contact with them, she screamed while instinctively slamming the door. The two children had solid black eyes, something María had never experienced before. The sight of them had so disturbed this Mexican housewife that she couldn’t speak of it for days. María’s was not the only sighting of what has been termed “Black Eyed Children” in Tijuana that year. In fact, the same sort of thing had been happening throughout Mexico, from northern Baja to the Yucatan, since about the year 2002.

Initial reports of what has been termed Black Eyed Children or Black Eyed Kids, have been popping up since the mid-1990s. It seems like the phenomenon started in the United States and the UK and has spread to other parts of the world. The scenario is rather similar wherever it is experienced. One to three elementary-school-age children will show up at the potential victim’s door, lost, hungry, needing to use the phone or the bathroom. They tend to speak in a monotone voice. It could be a boy or girl or combinations of boys and girls who show up. They are never accompanied by adults or animals of any kind. These mysterious visitors never physically force themselves into a home, but always ask permission to enter. They always knock, even if there is a doorbell. Their primary objective, it seems, is to get into the house. It is unknown what they do if they are granted entry because there have been no reports across Mexico or throughout the world of anyone letting them in. They are pale-skinned and their hair color may vary but their facial structures are always even and their complexions flawless. Their features are Caucasian and never appear in the forms of other races. Often, these strange kids are wearing handmade clothing or clothes from another time period. They initiate their contact looking down or looking away. When they first make eye contact, the person they are facing is often filled with an intense feeling of horror, as if their appearance is accompanied by a potent form of malevolence. The eyes of these children are completely black with not a single sliver of white or color from the pupil. Soon after revealing their black eyes the kids usually disappear, leaving no trace that they were there. This phenomenon seemed to have spread slowly out of the US and England and now can be found in other parts of the world. In Mexico, the children have been called “Los niños con ojos completamente negros.” Sometimes Mexican paranormal researchers use the term “Los Beks” a Spanglish twist of the English abbreviation for “Black Eyed Kids” – B E K – “bek.”

In early March of 2015 in the opposite end of the Mexican Republic from Tijuana a spate of sightings of Los Beks occurred in Mérida, the centuries-old capital of the state of Yucatan. According to an article found in Milenio Novedades, the sightings began with two appearances of the children in two different areas in the city, in the México and Xibalbá neighborhoods. In each case, the mysterious kids appeared on the doorsteps of private homes asking for water and if they could come in the houses. The children in both cases fit the standard black eyed kids description and caused great distress in those who experienced them. On Sunday, March 7th, two separate instances involving these children occurred in Merida’s Xoclán Cemetery. Juana Solís was at the graveyard with her three daughters leaving flowers at the tomb of a relative who had recently passed. A small boy with ojos completamente negros approached them asking for water. When they turned around, the boy had disappeared. Later that day, a man identified as Pedro saw two children fitting the appropriate description in the same cemetery but he had no interaction with them and they vanished as quickly as they had appeared.

There are dozens of theories as to what the Black Eyed Children actually are. As this phenomenon has cropped up and spread in the mid-1990s, some allege that it is an early version of what is called “Creepypasta.” The word creepypasta comes from the combination of two words, “creepy” and “copypasta,” the latter term first coined on 4chan to denote a doubtful story that is copy and pasted all over the internet. So, one of the biggest theories about the black eyed children alleges that it is just an urban legend that has gone wild because of the internet. Urban legends aside, there have been many real people who have actually claimed to have seen these kids. An online article stated that in one year in Mexico alone there were two sightings in Tijuana, 4 sightings in Monterrey, 3 sightings in the state of Tamaulipas and 11 sightings in the state Sinaloa. If we are to believe these people who have come face to face with these mysterious beings, what could they be? Are they physical or something more paranormal, like ghosts? Are they interdimensional beings? If they are really flesh-and-blood children, what explains their appearance, their actions and their motives? Some claim that los beks are alien-human hybrids sent to earth to mingle with humans. Their awkward mannerisms may indicate beings who are not entirely familiar with human civilization. Are they normal human children – possibly kidnapped – subject to some sort of medical experiment or mind control? That theory would not explain the uniformity in skin color and features, however. Also, the total blackening of the eyes would not allow light to enter the eye and would thus make vision impossible. Are they related to the alien race better known as The Greys? With big black eyes and pale skin, the black eyed kids vaguely resemble the legendary race of spindly, big-headed, ashen-skinned nefarious abductors. Their sightings are not connected with UFOs or anything else, so it seems. Most of the black-eyed children sightings happen randomly to random people. As this phenomenon has been studied intensely in the past few years, researchers have been looking for patterns but have been unable to find any. Many believe that the kids represent a type of psychic vampire, in that they inspire fear in those who see them, and somehow inspiring fear is their nourishment. There is a similarity between the black eyed kids and the vampire legends in that the kids ask to be let into the house and seem like they can’t do anything without an invitation. The ease with which the children appear or disappear, combined with the terror they strike in the people they choose to victimize have led some to believe that the black eyed kids are demons or manifestations of occult rituals. There is even a theory floating around the internet stating that the black eyed kids are the product of a CIA experiment gone wrong. So the story goes, the CIA during the Cold War wanted to weaponize the occult and recruited a Catholic priest from Nebraska to summon demons to be used by military intelligence against America’s enemies abroad. As with many “genie out of the bottle” stories, the demons could not be controlled and so they slowly spread among the earth. This would serve to explain why these mysterious children started showing up first in the United States in the 1990s and then in Mexico about ten years later. There is no physical evidence of the visitations of the black-eyed kids and one has never been caught for questioning or study. All that we have are eyewitness accounts, rumors and stories of stories in a “friend of a friend” sort of way. The growth of this phenomenon seems to have been going hand in hand with the growth of the internet.

No theories or claims of legends would have been of any comfort to a woman identified as Valeria who had an encounter with a black eyed child back in February of 2012. A resident of a small town in the Mexican state of Colima, Valeria was very tired one day after spending hours in class and the rest of her day at her part-time job at a factory. In the early evening she heard a knock on her door, a very persistent knock. She opened her door to see standing before her a boy of about 4 or 5 years old looking down and muttering the words, “mama, mama.” Valeria asked the child questions. Was he lost? Where were his parents? Thinking the boy’s caretakers must have been somewhere close by, Valeria took the boy by the hand and started to walk away from the house toward the road. She was surprised how cold the boy’s hand was, but it was February and they were higher up in elevation and it was cold at that time of day. After about 8 steps toward the road, the child let go of Valeria’s hand and then looked at her with his completely black eyes. When her eyes met his, Valeria let out a scream and started to run. The kid ran in the other direction. It took her days for her life to feel normal. She never saw the child again.

There are dozens of stories like this coming from Mexico and the rest of the world. Whether or not this phenomenon is real, we at Mexico Unexplained would like to share a foolproof and sound piece of advice to all who may cross paths with the Black Eyed Children on this side of the border or the other: Don’t let them in!

REFERENCES: Various online sources.