The legend of Black-Eyed Children, or B.E.K., is a modern urban legend of mysterious, ghastly, ghostly evil children who appear late at night with solid black eyes. It apparently first dates from Texas folklore in the mid-1990s. It is the ominous horror scare of the obstructed gaze of deep black eyes from young kids as images of demonic and devilish possession. Although a relatively “new” legend, they have been reported worldwide.
The original Texas legend was told by Brian Bethel, who claimed to have met the black-eyed children when he was out paying his cable bill in 1996 while living in Abilene, Texas. He stated he was sitting in his car outside a strip mall writing his check, and then a group of teenagers, wearing hoodies and possessing black eyes, came standing in his car – they asked him for a ride to their mother’s house to get money for movie tickets. However, the movie was already running, and the teenagers sounded older than the kids. He was scared and sped away when, looking back, the kids disappeared. He wrote about the encounter and published it in the Abilene New Reporter.
Many scholars say this urban legend has evolved from demonic descriptions of possessed children or could be examples of death personified as children. Children have also been an image of dark fae or fairies, shorter-statured humans with dark black eyes. They often have pale skin and appear to people in cars or homes, wanting to be in the vehicle or home.
The eyes are solid jet black, with no pupils, white, or iris, just totally black. The kids are often school-aged, ranging from kindergarteners to high schoolers. Often, their clothes are outdated, and they speak in a monotone voice, more mature than perceived age. They often repeat the same phrase and insist on being let inside the house or the car the appears before. They start innocent and evolve into more aggressive in their actions. Like vampires, they must be invited in to have power over an individual. When denied, they wander off. The accounts of these children allowed in led to the disaster unfolding, ranging from tragedy to destruction, cancer, and curses.
In Irish lore, these creatures are sometimes compared to changelings. Changelings in Irish faerie lore are fairy babies swapped for human children and are often riddled with evil actions or destruction. Water baby legends from Lake Tahoe, California, also share imagery and actions, such as when they cry to lure people to their deaths.
References:
Bethel, Brian 2015 “Brian Bethel recounts his possible paranormal encounter with BEKs”. Abilene Reporter News. December 8, 2015.
One of the most common Fae species known in folklore … “Changelings” are faerie creatures that replace stolen human children. These are sometimes called an “auf” or “oaf.” In fairy lore and myth, there are many tales about fairies stealing a human child and substituting it with a misshapen fairy baby known as a “changeling.” Sometimes, they are replaced not by fairies but by demons, trolls, nereids, or spirits. Sometimes, they replace the child with a piece of wood that appears to be alive under a glamour for a short period of time.
Adults have been reportedly taken and replaced as well, especially in Ireland, Scotland, and Scandinavia. There is also the historic-day event of a man murdering his wife, Bridget Cleary, in Ireland. because they believed she was replaced by a changeling.
Throughout world lore, fairies, for some reason, like to kidnap human adults and children. Some claim the abducted human children are given to demons, faeries, or the devil or imbued into faerie races to strengthen their stock. Sometimes, newlywedded wives and mothers are taken. It is believed that some nursing mothers were kidnapped to provide milk to fairy children.
In the United States, there was an attested case of Miss Kittie Crowe who was believed to have been taken from fairies in 1876. It has been rumored that King Charles I of England (1600-1649) was a changeling as a nursemaid claimed a hooded figure appeared at his bedside and cast a cloak over his cradle with him in it.
The most targeted human victims are usually unbaptized babies, blonde-haired children, those with blue eyes, pretty girls, women touched by the fae, those found walking in a fairy ring, those wandering near fairy mounds at night, and anyone who sleeps under a hawthorn bush. In Catholic folklore, there is a widespread belief that infants are susceptible to demonic possession, which is why baptism is very important.
Changeling Traits
When a parent discovers the baby in their crib is not their own, for whatever reason, certain telltale signs signify it is a fairy surrogate. These changelings could have a deformed appearance, a wizened look, appear thin or weak, sickly or ailing, and not stop crying.
Adult changelings appear to have a voracious appetite, are aging, exhibit unfamiliar behavior and trickery, love dancing and frolicking outside when thinking they are alone not being observed by others, and often comment on their own age.
There is a myth in Ireland that a left-handed child is not human but rather a changeling. A child with a caul (remnant amniotic membrane) across their face was a changeling in Scotland.
Changelings are described as creatures that look like the humans they replace but are often sickly, aged, withered, or just “off.” Sometimes, they possess physical features rare in humans, such as an infant having a beard or long teeth. They come off as being more intelligent or gifted than those usual for their physical age appearance.
Sometimes, if a changeling is raised as a human child and is never detected, they will forget they are fae and continue living a human life. Those that do remember may return to their fae families leaving the human family without warning, while the abducted human may never return.
Around the World
While predominantly ascribed to the legends and lore of Celtic countries, their existence is described worldwide. In European folklore, they are seen as deformed or imbecilic offspring of fairies or elves. The Welsh call this fairy race the “cipenapers” (a contraction of kidnappers). In world folklore, there are many creatures similar to the “changeling.” Many of these are described as creatures left by spirits. They are mentioned in African, Asian, Germanic, and Scandinavian folklore.
In Scandinavia during the Medieval period, trolls were believed to trick humans into raising their offspring. They often targeted unbaptized children since those baptized were protected from trolls. In Scotland, it was said the replacement children gave fairy children a tithe to Hell as discussed in the infamous ballad “Tam Lin.” In Germany, they are called Wechselbalg, Wechselkind, Kielkopf, or Dickkopf. They are said to either be the devil, a female dwarf, a water spirit, or a Roggenmuhme (Rye Mother – a demonic woman living in cornfields and stealing human children). In the Anglo-Scottish border region of Scotland, it was believed that the faeries living in the “elf hills” would spirit away children and adults, taking them back to their world, and a simulation of the victim, usually by an adult male elf left to be suckled by the mother. The elves would treat the human baby well and raise it as one of their own.
In Poland, the Boginka or Mamuna was a Slavic spirit that would exchange babies with changelings that often possessed abnormally large abdomens, small or large heads, humps, thin arms/legs, hair body, and/or long claws. In Spain, it is often a nymph called Xana who would appear to travellers to help them. These little female fairies were born with enchanting beauty and would often deliver babies for humans that they’d swap with fairy babies because Xana could not produce milk. The Igbo people of eastern Nigeria believed that women in the tribe who lost numerous children were being tormented by a malicious spirit known as an ogbanje that reincarnated itself over and over.
Social scientists such as folklorist D.L. Ashliman claim that this myth illustrates the aspect of family survival in pre-industrial Europe. Families then relied on the productive labor of each family member to subsist, and there had to be a solution for those family members who drained the resources. Since changeling’s appetites were known to be voracious, they were seen as a threat to the family. Infanticide was sometimes utilized as the solution to this dilemma.
Some scientists claim that the “changeling” accusation would often be used to explain deformed, developmentally disabled, or neurodivergent children. Various legends have claimed those with symptoms of spinal Bifida, cystic fibrosis, PKU, progeria, Down syndrome, homocystinuria, Williams syndrome, Hurler syndrome, Hunter syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, Prader-Willi syndrome, and cerebral palsy were symptoms of a “changeling.”
As parents had higher expectations of childbirth and when children were born with ailments, they preferred to find a demon to blame for the ailment. Regressive autism has been compared to the marks of a changeling child. Before autism was defined and understood, it was very common for children possessing autistic traits to be labeled as elf-children or changelings because of their strange, inexplicable behavior. The obsession that faeries seem to have with an impulse to count things is now a trait found in autistic cases.
A network of humans today, known as “Otherkin” sometimes identify as being “changelings” (or elves, fairies, faeries, aliens, and were-creatures) often because their life experiences exist with feeling out of place in this world so much that they self-identify as being not human.
In movies, music, books, magazines, art, and literature there has been much focus on “changelings” and its phenomena.
Throughout the world, in folklore, there is a method of detecting changelings, such as eggshells. Arranging empty eggshells around a fireplace or hearth, a changeling can’t help but get up and examine them. They will peer into each other, saying, “This is but a windbag; I am so many hundred years old, and I have never seen the like of this.” Another method is for one to pretend that they are brewing water into the halves of eggshells. The changeling is said to jump up and declare, “I have seen the egg before the hen, I have seen the acorn before the oak, but I have never seen brewing in an eggshell before!” thereby revealing its age such as “I’m 1500 years old in the world and I’ve never seen a brewery of eggshells before!” Other methods are causing it pain or making it laugh. Many child abuse cases in Ireland have excuses that it was done only to reveal the changeling inside. In German and Irish lore, a changeling can be revealed by tricking it to believe its being heated or cooked in a oven. Also whipping, hitting, or abusing the changeling will sometimes force it out.
Füssli- Der Wechselbalg-1780
When a changeling reveals itself, lore states it’ll disappear up a chimney, and the real baby will be found alive and well outside the door or sleeping in its cradle.
Many spells and prayers exist to protect a child from a changeling. One method is leaving pieces of iron beneath the cradle, making rowan wood crosses with red thread, using St. John’s wort, or wrapping a child in its father’s shirt. Keeping an inverted coat or open iron scissors near the bed is also said to deter them. A red ribbon tied around the baby’s wrist or wearing a red hat would prevent an abduction in Poland. Not washing diapers after sunset, not turning one’s head away from a sleeping baby, and keeping a baby out of moonlight would also be protective measures.
In Cornwall, the magical stones known as the “Men an Tol” are believed to be guarded by a faerie who can return stolen children when the changeling baby is based through the stone.
  This article is a work in progress. Please return for more lore.Â
My Little Pony Friendship is Magic – children’s television series featuring shape-shifting pony-like creatures called changelings.
So Weird – Disney Channel episode “Changeling” features a child swapped with a changeling.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – race of shape-shifting aliens called “changelings.”
Supernatural – Season 3, “The Kids Are Alright” features changelings.
The Changeling – 2023 Horror fantasy television series by Kelly Marcel and Melina Matsoukas.
The Daisy Chain – 2008 movie about a little girl believing she was a changeling.
The Hole in the Ground – 2019 movie based on changeling folklore.
The Moorchild by Eloise McGraw is a story about a half human – half folk child exchanged for a human child.
The Watchers (PG-13: 2024): Set in Western Ireland, a human woman with changeling aspects gets trapped in the woods only to join three others also captive in a bunker where they have to entertain changelings at night, using them for a plot to escape their imprisonment beneath the surface and within the forest.
I’m always fascinated with films that embrace the age-old faerie lore and embed it into current times. This film does just that. Another stunning mysterious tale from the Shyamalan lineage, this time by his daughter … and lives up to the power of the Shyamalan collection. Taking place in the land of legends and fairy lore … western Ireland, a young artist gets stranded in the woods discovering three others who too, are trapped. They have to hide in a bunker every evening and daylight provides little time to find an escape before darkness falls. Strange phenomena cloaks their every move and soon its discovered that the species of Changelings of the Fae imprisoned under the earth has a plot for their escape. True to descriptive nature of changelings and dark fae, this film embraces the most horror filled nightmares surrounding them. It leaves room for a sequel, which I can only hope manifests into reality. Review by Oisin Rhymour, 5 stars out of 5.
Christmas morning 2023 I trekked out to a real-life Witch hunt or Changeling location. Was I to meet the Fae in the legendary ringfort or simply come to a dead end? A dead end it was, of course. The Ringfort I believed was the location of the body swapping was on private property, and there was no way to find a way in with the time I had available. We’re talking about Ireland’s infamous last burning of a Witch or killing of a Changeling: that is the 1895 murder of Bridget Cleary in Ballyvadlea, Ireland. Her body was dumped in a shallow grave in a bog then relocated to an unmarked grave in a local cemetery. I casually explored a few graveyards, but could not find the grave – the grave and marriage photo is from historical archives.
This is a tale of folklore merging with national identity, as often is the case with folklore and a nation.
Folklore is complex, it is the beliefs, customs, stories, and practices of a culture, depicting the cultural process and history of a people. It has no single definition. It does define national identity, especially in the case of countries like Ireland and the United Kingdom so riddled with legends and lore. It depicts the daily life stories of a people. Ireland manifests stories of leprechauns and fairies. In the 16th century, the traditional political and religious autonomy of the Irish was overthrown by English colonization. This was followed closely by the Great Famine in the 1840s. The Irish belief system was challenged as was its national identity. As Ireland strugged with its own self-government afterward it braved balancing a new state of affairs and horrors to deal with. As the famine ravished rural Gaelic areas with death and emigration, the traditional culture was demised under industrialization and English customs. They did share the belief in fairies with the United Kingdom. If anything cultural the Irish are famous in the world for their belief in the Fae.
As the lore was passed on orally through the generations finding its way into literature and defining the landscape, many superstitions regulated how the Irish would function in its new world and boundaries.
Particular reverence and avoidance were made of fairy trees especially hawthorns and ancient ring forts deemed fairy forts – all as places where the Fae relocated, and portals to their dimensions existed. No elder would disrespect the fairies or have to pay the price if they did. Roads were re-routed to avoid fairy trees, farmers left the ringforts in their fields to be avoided, and corners of houses were removed so as to not overlap a fairy path.
If the fae were angered, they were often hostile, mischievous, and troublesome – lashing out with curses, sickness, misfortune, and sometimes death. Of the Genus “Fae” there were thousands of different kinds of species in Irish fairy lore – all possessing their own supernatural aspects, characteristics, and traits all rooted to the ancient Celtic and Gaelic Pagan Gods and Goddesses.
The fae was normally invisible to most of the human species living in the air, swimming in the seas, underground, or in the woods. They sometimes were human sized and othertimes minute. Some resembled humans living life parallel to humankind while others replaced humans. The fae was known to steal children and young adults replacing them with rotting withered changelings as a replacement. It has been said, that humans who spend too much time with the Fae may lose sense of time, have hundreds of years pass before they return to this dimension, othertimes are curses, waste away or die after their return.
Often the changelings are moody, evil-minded, sickly, or just not right in the head. Their behaviors are noticeably intolerable – such as sickly babies who never stop crying, and adults who no longer communicate or become anti-social. The only way to get rid of a Changeling and bring back the stolen human was death by fire. Or so the belief at that time dictated.
Such was the case with the good-spirited young woman named Bridget Cleary who was burnt to death by her husband Michael in hopes that she would be returned to him. This gave birth to the folk rhyme “Are you a witch or are you a fairy, or are you the wife of Michael Cleary?”
Bridget grew up in Ballyvadlea, 11 miles from Clonmel, in a very small village – daughter of local farmer Patrick Boland, she was educated by the local nuns and apprenticed to a dressmaker in Clonmel. She married Michael Cleary the local Clonmel cooper at age 18. She oddly lived on a fairy rath (fairy fort) and traveled within the fairy landscape selling eggs to supplement her dress-making income. She often went up on the local fairy fort atop Kylenagranagh Hill to deliver to the local seanchai, Jack Dunne.
Early March 1895 after a bitterly cold day she caught a chill returning to her cottage bedridden for many days afterwards only worsening in health. She was visited by friends and family, even her customer Jack Dunne, who upon seeing her stated “that is not Bridget Boland.” Her husband Michael heard this and steadily became convinced the woman sick in bed was a changeling. Jack recommended the local “Fairy Doctor” named Denis Ganey to come to see her – he was unable to in person but sent Michael an herbal concoction mixed with milk that would restore the real individual.
Threatening the changeling with fire and persistent questioning could also reveal the Changeling. March 14, 1895 neighbors Minnie and William Simpson came to visit Bridget they encountered a frightful scene of Jack Dunne and cousins Patrick, James, and William holding her down on the bed, forcing the concoction into her while she screamed of its bitterness. The next night, her cousin Joanna Burke visited to find Michael and Bridget fighting and telling Joanna that her husband was trying to make “a fairy of her” only to be stifled by Michael. He kept asking her if she was his wife. He lost control, tore off her clothes, and brandished a brand from the fire into her face.
Guests were locked into the cottage, and Bridget’s head struck the floor, and moments later her chemise was afire. Michael fed paraffin to the blaze, sat in a chair, and watched her burn saying “She’s not my wife. She’s an old deceiver sent in place of my wife”. Her burnt body was buried on adjacent land, and all swore silence, rumoring her disappearance, that she had gone with the fairies. All believed she would reappear at the Kylegranagh ring fort racing among the fairies on a white horse – and if the men were quick, could cut the cords tying her to the horse so she could return to them.
The horrible murder took place in southern Tipperary in Ballyvadlea near Clonmel, Ireland – around the Spring Equinox of 1895. In the small village of nine houses and a population of 30 – the world was rocked with headlines about the savagery of the Irish as it was told she was “slowly roasted to death because she was, in her relatives’ belief, bewitched”.
March 22, 1895, the local police discovered the charred remains of a woman in a boggy field within a shallow grave outside of ballyvadlea – severely burnt, naked, a few strands of her undergarments and black stockings. Her head was hidden within a sack. It was Michael’s wife Bridget Cleary. It was discovered that she was abused and murdered by her husband and father as well as other family members. Within the court, it was conspiracy-ridden with tales of changelings and kidnapping by the Fae. All ten in the house were arrested, men involved were given sentences ranging from 6 months to 20 years. Michael was sentenced to 20 years and upon release moved to Liverpool, then to Canada. The news classified it as a “witch burning case” (Glasgow Herald, July 5th, 1895) rather than a fairy burning for sensationalism, and therefore marked as the last witch burnt in Ireland.
References:
Bourke, Angela 2001 “The Burning of Bridget Cleary”. Penguin: New York.
Cork Examiner 1895 various articles March 23, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30 and April 3, 5, 6, 1895.
National Monuments Service 2023 Archaeological Survey of Ireland: ESRI Heritage Historic Environment Viewer at https://heritagedata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=0c9eb9575b544081b0d296436d8f60f8
Irish Place undated “The unmarked Grave: Brutal Murder or a Faery Killing the Slaying of Bridget Cleary” website referenced 12/24/23 at https://www.theirishplace.com/heritage/brutal-murder-or-a-faery-killing-the-slaying-of-bridget-cleary/attachment/the-unmarked-grave-of-bridget-cleary/
Irish Times 1895 Articles March 26, 27, 28th; April 2, 3, 6, 8th, 1895.
Kilkenny Castle undated “Folklore and Fairies and the Question of National Identity”. Website referenced 12/25/23 at https://kilkennycastle.ie/folklore-and-fairies-and-the-question-of-national-identity/
Munster Express 1895 “Johanna Burke’s testimony”.
Phil Cleary undated Bridget Cleary Murdered in 1895 in Ballyvadlea Just Another Little Murder. Website referenced 12/25/23 at https://philcleary.com.au/bridgetcleary/
Salaman, Redcliff N 2000 “The History and Social Influence of the Potato”. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
Unknown 1895 “Witch-burning at Clonmel”. Folklore: Vol 6, no 4, pages 373-384.
Wilde 1979 “Irish Popular Superstitions”. Dublin.
Wildfire Films 2006 “Fairy Wife: The Burning of Bridget Cleary” TV Movie, director Adrian McCarthy and writer Angela Bourke. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0989816/
Suspected Ringforts:
Kylenagrana – Explorations around Eastern Ireland. Monday, 25 December 2023. Adventures in County Kilkenny and Tiippencary, Ireland. Photos by Thomas Baurley, Techno Tink Media.
