A Lesser-Known Angle of the Black-Eyed Children: They Live On Our Energy

There can be no doubt that one of the creepiest phenomena to have surfaced in the last two decades is that of what have become infamously known as the Black-Eyed Children. It would be overly simplistic to suggest they are merely the offspring of the Men in Black and the Women in Black. Admittedly, though, there are deep similarities. And, also like the MIB and the WIB, the BEC are definitive drainers of our energy. Before we get to this aspect of the story, let’s first take a look at how, and under what specific circumstances, the Black-Eyed Children came to prominence. We’ll also take a look at a few classic cases. None of them are particularly heartwarming. As if you really needed to be told that. Although, today, we have people who claim to have seen the BEC in the period from the 1930s to the present day, the very first reported case didn’t surface until January 1998. The location was the Lone Star State, specifically the city of Abilene. The story revolves around a man named Brian Bethel, a journalist who works for the Abilene Reporter News. It was late one night when Bethel’s life was changed and he came to realize that there are dangerous, supernatural entities in our midst. It was close to 10:00 p.m. when Bethel had the kind of close encounter that one never, ever forgets. He had pulled up at a mall not too far from his home, to deposit a check in a mail-box. All was quiet and dark. Bethel, using the lights of the mall to illuminate the interior of his vehicle, was writing the check when he was rudely interrupted. He jumped with surprise at the sight of a couple of kids who were standing next to the car, on the driver’s side. But, there was something about these kids that rang alarm bells in Bethel’s head. In fact, as Bethel would imminently learn, things were wrong in the extreme.

Bethel stared at the pair and couldn’t fail to see just how incredibly pale the face of one of the boys was. The other had what Bethel described as olive-colored skin. Both boys were around ten to fourteen years of age, Bethel estimated, and both were dressed in pullovers. Only one of the two boys spoke – he claimed that they wanted to see a movie at the local cinema. But, there was a problem: they had left their money at home. Could Bethel take them to their homes to get some cash? Bethel near-instantly realized that this whole situation had an air of dark and disturbing theater about it. There was an undeniably unsettling agenda at work, and it had absolutely zero to do with movies. Bethel awkwardly hemmed and hawed for a few moments, something which caused the talkative boy to become ever more insistent that Bethel let them in the car. Then, things became downright eerie and chilling: Bethel found himself almost mind-manipulated, to the point where, to his horror, he could see that his hand was heading to the driver’s-side door – with the intent of opening it, but without his control. Bethel, fortunately, broke the enchanting spell and didn’t open the door, after all. This clearly incensed the talkative boy, who amped up the pleas to allow them into Bethel’s car. It was then, for the first time, that Bethel finally got a good look at their eyes. In his own words - referenced in Pararational’s May 16, 2013 article titled “Brian Bethel – The Black Eyed Kids” – Bethel stated: “They were coal black. No pupil. No iris.”

The two boys realized that, by now, they were losing the battle to be permitted to get into Bethel’s car. On this very point, Bethel himself said that the boy who did all of the talking “wore a mask of anger.” The boy, now displaying a look on his face which was part-frustration and part-anger, almost shouted: “We can’t come in unless you tell us it’s okay. Let us in!” Bethel, terrified, did nothing of the sort. What he did do was to slam the car into reverse and head for home, completely panicked by the whole thing. Oddly, as he drove away, Bethel looked back, only to see that the boys were nowhere in sight. In what was clearly and impossibly quick time, they had vanished. And, thus was quickly born a legend. It’s a legend that shows no signs of stopping. It’s only getting worse. The West Virginia city of Point Pleasant is inextricably linked to the legend of the red-eyed Mothman, that flying fiend which terrorized the people of Point Pleasant from late 1966 to December 1967. In 2012, though, it was black eyes – rather than red eyes – which caused so much terror for one woman, who we’ll call “Marie.” Although Marie’s BEC encounter occurred in 2012, she did not speak about it until two years later. She was in her mid-twenties when she had an encounter she was destined to never, ever forget. There is no doubt that the fear in Marie’s face was as clear as it was obvious when she related the facts to me at the 2014 Mothman Festival - which is held in Point Pleasant every September, and which attracts people in their thousands. 

Marie worked irregular hours in her job. As a result, on a Saturday night, shortly after 11:00 p.m., she was stretched out on her couch, in front of the TV, after a ten-hour-long stint at work. She had got herself a pizza and a couple of cans of Coors Lite. All was good. For a while. Marie practically flew off the couch with fear as there was a loud knock on the front door of her second-floor apartment. She thought: who the hell could that be at this time of night? It was a very good question. Marie carefully crept silently to the door and looked through the spy-hole, her breathing already slightly labored. There were two boys, staring back at her, and both wearing black hoodies. She asked if they were okay. No reply. That wasn’t a good sign: Marie put the chain on the door and then opened it the couple of inches that the chain would allow. Two things immediately struck Marie – and filled her with fear: their skin was as white as a sheet of paper. One of them, in a monotone and blank fashion, demanded “food.” Not surprisingly, Marie slammed the door, and ran to the furthest wall in the living room. Her mind was in a whirlwind of confusion and fear. After a few minutes, she again crept to the door and looked through the spyhole: the boys were still there. Most disturbing of all, the pair clearly reacted when Marie looked at them – even though she had done so in complete silence.  Then, something even more terrifying happened: the pair of “children,” suddenly shimmered – like a “heatwave,” said Marie – and transformed into a pair of bipedal, green, slimy monsters. In seconds, they were swallowed up by a sudden, black nothingness outside the door and were gone. It’s hardly surprising that when she was satisfied that all was okay, Marie fled her apartment and went to stay with her mother for the next three days, who lived in nearby Ohio. Notably, for the next three days Marie felt “exhausted” and as if she had the flu. A coincidence? No.

Marie’s reference to her pair of monstrous BEC demanding “food” is intriguing. As we have seen, her late-night visitors were clearly not flesh and blood entities – at least, not in the way we see things. This strongly suggests that the kind of food they had in mind was something along the lines of Prana energy. Certainly, she felt depleted after the encounter. There are other Black-Eyed Children cases that add weight to this particular theory. We’ll begin with the account of “Martin,” who lives just outside of Tecumseh, Oklahoma. Martin’s encounter with the BEC went down in March 2011, and who I was able to interview personally just a few weeks after his experience. Like Marie, Martin was at home alone when he had just about the worst encounter was possible. As a brief aside, that Martin, Marie and Brian Bethel were all alone when they had their experiences suggests a certain modus operandi at work. Namely, one which is designed to target people who are at their most vulnerable: when there is no-on else around to help them. Even a cursory study of BEC history demonstrates that most witnesses are on their own when the Black-Eyed Children turn up. How the BEC know when and where to target people who are all alone is anyone’s guess.

In terms of Martin’s encounter, it occurred two days after he returned home. As a truck-driver, he had been on the road for two weeks and was looking forward to a few days of relaxation and fun. He got neither. On his first night back, Martin planned on watching a bunch of shows he had recorded while he was away on the road.  The evening began in completely normal fashion: he made himself a big sandwich, cracked open a cold beer and watched his shows. Normality was about to go out of the window. Around 8:30 p.m., there was that knock on the door, the kind of which so many witnesses to the BEC have now experienced, but surely wished they hadn’t. Martin didn’t even bother looking through the spy-hole: he assumed it was his immediate neighbor, Rex. Sadly for Martin, as he opened the door, he instantly realized it was not Rex. Martin got the shock of his life when he was confronted by a boy and a girl – both around eleven or twelve years of age and with large, black, eerie-looking eyes. The girl was dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved black top, while the boy had the almost-ubiquitous black hoodie. Both looked sickly and scrawny and is if they needed a hearty meal in them. Little did Martin know that this was exactly what they were there for. Hardly a fan of the supernatural, Martin had never heard of the BEC phenomenon and could only stand and stare at their curious faces, assuming at first that this was some kind of joke. But, the Black-Eyed Children were certainly not laughing. They stood together, hand in hand, looking at Martin with expressions on their faces that were, paradoxically, lacking in emotion but which also gave off airs of highly charged malevolence.

Echoing Brian Bethel’s encounter back in the 1990s, Martin said that when the girl said they were homeless and needed something to eat, it all seemed very much like a ruse – as if they had spoken the words time and time again. It was like a carefully-crafted scheme on their part. Most disturbing of all, for a few moments Martin felt transfixed – almost hypnotized – by those large, black eyes. Indeed, he told me that he could not understand why he did not quickly shut the door at the sight of those terrible eyes. Martin could only say that it was if he was somehow being prevented from shutting the door on the pair. One might be justified in saying Martin had been placed in a state of full-blown mind-control. The girl repeated: “We need to eat. May we come in?” There is one missing portion from Martin’s story: he cannot recall how the pair got into his house. He recalls inviting them in – “it felt like I said it in a dream” – but, the next thing he remembers is seeing the pair standing in front of him, while he was sat on his living-room couch. The girl said just one word: “eat.” At that point, Martin suddenly felt deathly ill. It was, he said, as if he “hadn’t eaten in days.” He explained that it was as if he himself was suddenly starving, but it was the children who needed to eat. The pair stared intently at Martin, who found himself getting weaker and weaker. And weaker still. “Crashing” might be a more ideal term to use: Martin found himself barely able to move. Not because he was being prevented from moving, but because physically-speaking he simply did not have the energy to even stand up. It was, Martin said, as if he was himself being eaten alive by the paranormal pair of ghoulish things in his midst. 

After a few minutes, both the girl and the boy turned and left, still holding hands. Martin finally managed to crawl to his bedroom, where he lapsed into a deep sleep. He did not wake until well into the following afternoon. For the next three four or days, the overwhelming weakness – made worse by bouts of dizziness and a bad taste in his mouth – kept him in his bed. It was almost a week later before he finally felt fully back to normal. While Martin has no idea as to what the BEC were or are, he believes they were not human and, somehow, had drained him of energy. Now, let's get to the great-grand-daughter of the witness of a woman who I have dubbed “Jane.” Her experience is an interesting one, as it demonstrates that the BEC phenomenon is not the relatively new one that most people assume it to be. Jane, unfortunately, is no longer with us: she died in 1992 at the age of eighty-seven. Jane’s granddaughter contacted me in 2016 to share the details of the encounter – which all of the family had heard of, and which was kind of like the definitive skeleton in the closet: everyone knew of it, but no-one really wanted to talk about it. At least, that is, until Jane’s granddaughter related the facts to me. At the time of her encounter, Jane was just eighteen years old. This would have put her encounter in 1923 – which is astonishing, given that the BEC phenomenon is assumed to be one of fairly modern times. Jane and her family were living in a small town in Eastern Louisiana. Times were hard and the family of seven struggled to make ends meet. If that were not enough, it was in January 1923 that Jane had her first encounter with what can only be described as one of the Black-Eyed Children. 

It was in the early hours of one particular morning that Jane awoke – unable to move and unable to speak – as a young boy, dressed in black, stretched out his hand and pointed at her. Instantly, she began to feel ill and lacking in energy – the paralysis and the inability to scream making things worse still. Then, suddenly, it was all over: the paralysis was gone. And so was the boy in black. Jane, practically hysterical, woke her parents and told them of what had happened. The most terrifying part of the encounter? The boy’s black eyes. For the next three nights the boy returned. The story was the same every night: the boy with the black eyes would manifest next to Jane as she lay in bed, unable to move an inch. As per the first time, he would reach out – the result of which was again a sudden feeling of overwhelming weakness. Although the boy never returned again, it took Jane – like Martin, decades later – days to get back to her normal self. Notably, in the immediate aftermath of the encounter, Jane had a series of nosebleeds – something which often occurs in paranormal situations. And, she took on a slightly jaundiced appearance, which was most definitely not a good sign. 

The story would undoubtedly have never surfaced had it not been for the fact that on one occasion in 2014, Jane’s great-granddaughter was channel-flipping and was confronted by a TV show that, in part, was focused on the BEC. Amazed and more than a bit disturbed, she realized what it was that Jane had encountered all those decades earlier: an energy-sucking thing that saw Jane as a convenient source of nutrition. So, with all of that said, what exactly, might the Black-Eyed Children be? I can only say that even after around twenty years of cases and incidents, we still have no real answer to what the Black Eyed Children are. Only one thing for sure: keep away from them.