Haunted Cosmos - The Black Eyed Kids

Episode Date: January 3, 2024

In this episode of Haunted Cosmos, Brian and Ben continue Season Two by talking through one of the—bottom line—creepiest phenomenons ever: The Black Eyed Kids. Tune in and let us know what you think!Love Haunted Cosmos? Get access to our exclusive show, The Dusty Tome, early ad-free access to main episodes, monthly AMA's, and livestreams with Ben and Brian by becoming a patron of the show: https://www.patreon.com/c/HauntedCosmosBuy the Haunted Cosmos book: https://www.newchristendompress.com/cosmos PS: It's also available as an audiobook!This episode is also sponsored by Squirrelly Joe's Coffee. Visit their website here to purchase your first bag!  Share Coffee. Serve Humbly. Live faithfully. This episode is also sponsored by Private Family Banking Partners. Email them at:  banking(at)privatefamilybanking.com . For a free copy of a new book "Protect Your Money Now!  How to Build Multi-Generational Wealth Outside of Wall Street and Avoid the Coming Banking Meltdown" by Private Family Banking Partner, Chuck DeLadurantey,   go to www.protectyourmoneynow.net . Or, if you want to make an appointment to talk to a wealth advisor, click on the calendar link here: https://calendly.com/familybankingnow/30min.Support the show

This episode of Haunted Cosmos is brought to you by Right Response Ministries, private family banking, and Squirrely Joe's Coffee. Did you know that patrons of Haunted Cosmos get access to a weekly patron-only bonus show called The Dusty Tome? And the top two tiers of patrons get early access to add free shows. Join today on patreon.com for these benefits and more. And now on with the show. May we can end?

It was the middle of winter and an elderly couple living in a rural section of northern Vermont sat at the dinner table chatting and finishing their wine while they enjoyed the warm coziness that their cabin afforded them. As they told each other stories from their respective days they gazed out of the picture frame window into the forest of leafless trees to marvel at the beautiful blue and white hues of color reflecting off the forest floor lit up by the full moon. The old woman pondered just how ironic it was, that she thought those cold colors were beautiful at all. Because if she wasn't in her warm house

and was instead stuck out there with nowhere to go, the whole setting would suddenly become a hellscape to her, a dreadful place doing everything in its power to kill her. But since that layer of wood and insulation and drywall was between her and the snow, what otherwise would have been deadly seemed lovely. In a moment of quiet contentment, she commented just how grateful she was for her home so safe

and so comfortable. She was grateful for those walls. Soon, though, the uncertainty and risk and shadow of the dark winter night would break into that pocket of warmth and safety and change the couple's lives forever. As the two continued to enjoy their evening, they suddenly heard three loud knocks on the door. The knocks actually startled the both of them,

causing them to visibly jump in their chairs, as if jolted awake from sleep by a dream of falling. They had this reaction because, like I said, it was a rural place. Visitors weren't common up there, especially not in this weather and even more especially not at this time of night. Already a bit unsettled because of all this,

the old man made his way to the door, turned on the porch light and peered out the window that framed the front door. What he saw made him immediately rush to unlock and open the door. As the cold air flooded in, his wife was able to see why he had suddenly become so frantic. Two children stood on the front porch step,

shod and baggy and out-of-date clothing that offered virtually no protection from the biting wind. She briskly walked over to the door herself, shoving aside the immediate questions of where these kids came from and why they were clothed like that, in order to focus her mind on just getting them inside and getting them warm. When she was standing next to her husband, her arm wrapped around his and concern, the children asked them a question, both their heads drooping and eyes looking towards the ground in apparent fatigue.

Parents will be here soon. May we come in? They said. Maybe it was something in the voice that delivered the request, or even the wording, but both of them felt an immediate sense of pause. Why would anyone let their kids wait out on a night like this to be picked up, especially in this remote area? But is there a more potent drive than that of protecting children? Faced with the seemingly simple fact that just too cold and tired and hungry kids were standing before, them in the cold of a winter's night they acquiesced. They let the children cross the threshold,

that thin border between the dark and the warmth, civilization and the howling wild, and they came inside. The children walked calmly over to the couch and settled down while the old woman started working on some hot chocolate. Meanwhile, the old man asked them some more questions to make sure they were okay, but all of the questions went unanswered. The boy and girl just kept staring at the ground, as if they were ashamed. As the old woman made her way over to the couch with the finished cocoa, she noticed her cat, normally very outgoing and friendly to guests, standing with an arched back and swollen tail in the corner of the room, staring hateful daggers at the children. With small but perfectly peaceful voices they asked together,

may we please use the restroom? And it was at this moment, the moment the children raised their faces to look at the couple for the first time, that the old woman lost her breath, staggered backwards in complete fear, and was shocked. Whatever was staring at her was not normal, not human. It wasn't a child. This was some uncanny and grotesque mockery of God's image. And the heart of the wrongness of whatever was sitting in front of the couple was the eyes. Their eyes had no whites, no corneas, nothing. The eyes were obsidian pits of impenetrable black. Worried that her fear might startle the creatures into whatever evil they were here to do, she quickly regained her composure and directed them to the bathroom at the end of the hall,

before rushing back to her husband, who had his hand cupped over his face in some kind of shock. Did you see their eyes? she asked. Without a word, her husband lowered his hand. It was not for shock that he had clasped his mouth and nose. The woman looked down to see that her husband's hand was covered in thick red blood from a sudden nosebleed. They both looked at the hand and then each other and then down the hall to the bathroom door. Both of them silently prayed that somehow it had all been a dream, but it had not. While they stared down the hall, all the lights went dark in the house as the power shut off.

Driven by something, morbid curiosity, involuntary courage, the old woman slowly crept down the hall towards the bathroom door. She hadn't even made it halfway there when she was stopped dead by the sound of the children's voices, again in terrifying unison. Our parents are here. The old woman's bravery snapped like a dry branch. Her heart thundered in her chest as she desperately sought to make sense of what was happening. Suddenly, movement out of a nearby window, the one looking out of the house's driveway,

grabbed her attention. There on the driveway, she saw two very tall and very skinny men standing in black clothing that, much like the children's own, seemed to be from another era of the world. She put up her hand in an out of place and nervous wave. The two men did not wave back. With every muscle in her body tensed and strained, the woman snapped her head back towards the bathroom door. With a click, the door began to swing open.

Backlit by the vanity light, the silhouettes of the two children stood before her, their eyes somehow blacker than black, vanta black. She stood stone still while the pair calmly walked by her, neither saying a word nor even looking anywhere but directly in front of them. They walked back out the door, over that liminal plane between home and wild, and met the two strange men at the end of the driveway. Getting into a waiting car, and old black car, of course, the creatures drove away into the icy night as the couple watched out of the window.

The next day, they noticed that their cat, after being so troubled by the kids, had not appeared for hours. They soon discovered the morbid reason why, when they looked under the back porch and found it there, its white fur stained red as it lay in a pool of its own blood, dead. The old man continued to get nosebleeds until after a week of multiple bleeds a day, he went to the doctor where he was diagnosed with an aggressive and advanced skin cancer. The black-eyed kids had come. But what are they? And what do they want?

One of the answers that's been given in recent years comes to us from the far eastern regions of the world, those dominated by Buddhism. There's a legend in those lands of an evil ancient king named Mara. He was a man with a heart so full of envy that when he noticed the Buddha was close to achieving the enlightenment he so much desired, he grew jealous. Seeking to stumble the Buddha and caused him to turn from his quest, the evil king sent his three daughters, thirst, aversion, and greed to tempt the Buddha. When all three of them failed in their task, Mara became enraged and vengeful,

tricking himself into believing that the Buddha had somehow stuards, stolen something that rightfully belonged to him. But unable to do anything now to stop the monk, Mara simply resigned himself to a life of wallowing in his own bitterness and self-pity, and thus he died. He died alone, discontent, and full of insatiable desire for that which others have. As punishment for his infantile and sensual life, he was doomed to rule over all the souls of those stuck in what the Buddhists call the desire realm,

a place where those who were slaves of selfish desire in life will be bound to selfish desire again. These souls are called by those who still dwell in the material land of the living, hungry ghosts. The legend in China goes on to say that for one full moon out of the year, the gates of the Buddhist hell are opened and these hungry ghosts are given leave to roam free upon earth, to try and find some means with which they might satisfy their carnal and very literal hunger. When some unfortunate person stumbles upon a hungry ghost during this time of year when the veil is made thin, they are always struck by one unmistakable feature of the semi-corporial damned.

Their eyes are completely black. What's more, it isn't just China who claims to see these beings lurking around the dark corners of their city streets at night. In Tibet, they are called the Yidak. In India and Thailand, they are called Preta. In Japan, they are the gaki or on Rio. All of these words mean essentially the same thing, wandering spirit. The preta are described as having sunken gray skin and being emaciated with bloated with bloated stomachs to signify their incurable hunger.

The gaki are always spoken of as young children who were brats, spoiled from youth, and never reforming their ways of manipulating others for their own gain. The onriot are vengeful spirits who linger upon the earth. after having suffered an unjust death at the hands of one who will now suffer their haunting. In Islamic countries, the legend of the Jin runs heavily through various countries. Thought of as a preternatural race of intelligent beings, they fill the role of what in the Western world we'd call fairy, or for those Jin who have fallen, a demon.

They live in an unseen world parallel to our own, and sometimes able to affect the place that we know is Earth. It is said that if you walk through a region of the Middle East, less inhabited and inhabitable, you may begin to hear music in the wind. If this happens, it could be too late for you, as the gin love to terrorize people by throwing rocks at them, taking different forms of terrifying creatures to scare them, and even, in some cases, possessing them. At any rate, it's safe to say that the wandering, sometimes vengeful, sometimes hungry, sometimes tricky spirit runs deep in cultures throughout the world.

Now, let's be clear. We don't share all of this detail because we think the Buddhists, the Taoists, or the Muslims are right about how this works. Or about what these entities even are in the first place. No, we're Christians. Rather, we share these things because it's compelling that these far apart and far Middle Eastern cultures already have a category for this type of strange, tricky, nefarious, and an always wandering entity with pale face and obsidian black eyes. And now it seems the legend has finally begun to make more waves in the West.

In 1998, on a semi-popular internet forum, a post appeared from a man named Brian Bethel that would prove to be a spark, igniting a cultural fire in America that's still growing in heat today. The post recounted the following events. In Abilene, Texas, a man, Brian Bethel, sat in his car riding a check while parked in the lot of a strip mall shopping center close to his home. You see, back then you had to pay all of your bills manually,

and not everyone could leave their job to go mail or hand off a paper check to whatever service they needed to pay for that month. Because of this, after-hours payment drop boxes were set up around towns, so people could pay their utility and or service bills anytime they wanted to. And this is just what Brian was doing. It was a quiet, dry night, typical for Abilene. As he sat alone in the car he could faintly hear over his idling engine, the clicking of one of those orange streetlights above him as it flickered on and off. Just as he finished signing the check,

he was startled by the sudden sound of a soft tapping on his driver's side window. Bethel shot a glance over to see two young boys standing just outside of his car, heads tilted slightly down as if ashamed of something. Initially, he was calm. He started to reach for the window winder without a second thought, but then something gave him pause. He started to become acutely aware of seemingly small and random things. The car was running, the parking lot was empty. The streetlight was right over him.

He could just drive away without a second look at the two boys. Why did he want to do that so bad? Why was his body's fight or flight response kicking in? It was just two kids. Fighting the urge to flee, but not ignoring his sense of. of worry altogether. Bethel wound the window down only slightly, just enough to hear what the boys had to say. We want to go see a movie, but we don't have our money. Will you take us to our house so we can get

some?" The taller boy said this in a manner most robotic and uncanny. But what Bethel was most unsettled by was the smile plastered across the boy's face. It didn't seem right. He hesitated. Come on, mister. Now, we just want to go to our house, and we're just too late. little boys. Bethel could not ignore the panic welling up inside of him anymore, not even if he really wanted to. Nonetheless, he kept his wits about him and looked around for some way to get out of this. He looked up at the movie Marquis across the quiet street. The final showing of the night had already started almost an hour ago. What movie would these boys even see? He questioned the boys, but they continued to press the same issue ignoring him.

Come on, Mr. Let us in. We can't get in your car unless you let us in. Just let us in. and will be gone before you know it. As Bethel looked on and heard this with a mounting sense of fear, the boy raised his head. Meeting the boy's gaze, shot Bethel through with utter panic. He lost his breath and reeled away from the window in his seat. The eyes. The eyes were black, like two coals set into the face of a snowman, utterly black. The only life in them was the flashing light of the marquee that they reflected. Bethel, no longer looking for a reason to flee, slammed his car into gear and spent,

away into the Abilene night. He didn't look back. He had gazed into the face of an unknown and unexpected variable in the world, something he was sure he would never meet, a thing he could not describe apart from the words, pure evil. Well, welcome back everybody to another episode of Haunted Cosmos. Brian Sovey here, joined by my good friend, Benjamin Garrett. King. Ben, I just want to start this episode by apology. And when I say start, I mean 25 minutes in. Right. But you, everyone here knows the deal. And if you're new here, now you know the deal. Yeah, if you fuss about how long the cold opens are, we make them one minute longer for every word of your comment.

Like, that's how it works. I want to apologize. We don't make the rules. We don't make the rules. No, no. Look, if you let the black eyed children in, they will give you cancer. And if you fuss about stuff, we just do it more. It's called the rules.

That's so true. I wanted to start by just apologizing. Like Ben's voice physiognomy is always better than mine, but I've been fairly sick for the last couple weeks. And so that means your voice physiognomy right now is Pete. It's actually terrible. It's so good. Like I'm going to speak as little as possible just to not inflict it upon you guys. But here's the thing.

Like we can't deprive you of haunted cosmos just because I got a little bug. Right. Like we're not going to delay our production schedule any more than we already did. I vow to all of you and to you. that if a black-eyed kid comes into my house and ends my life. Yeah. I will still be here recording Hanna Cosmos. You actually can't vow that because it's impossible.

It's actually a rash vow. That was a rash vow. I cancel it as your father. Right. I just claimed me or my son. You just claimed, yeah. You're not, he's not my dad. Yeah, he's not.

We're also not related for any of you wondering. We're actually not related. We're not related. We're just buzz. We're fraternal twins, but other, we're not related in any other way. We are blood related, but other than that. Other than that, no. I can't make it any more clear than that.

Well, guys, it's going to be a great episode here. I wanted to let you know before we jump in here, got a couple little plugs for you. Number one, our friends, if you've seen our hilarious ad, you'll see it in this. If you're in YouTube, you'll see it in this video. Wherein Ben washes his hands with canola oil.

Yes. Just wait. Indigo Sundry Soap Company, our partners, good friends. they make just amazing soap products, no hormone disruptors, seed oils, any of that stuff. And we have a discount code that's new,

like even after we did that ad. Okay. If you use code of haunted Cosmos, all caps, no spaces. We'll put it in the description, 10% off any order. So it's just haunted Cosmos, not haunted Cosmos 10?

No. Okay, got to go out. Or haunted Cosmos, death to seed oils, or anything like that. I might use that coupon code because their soap is amazing. It's so good.

It's really, really great. The Cambrian clay. Anyway, we won't bore you. The sunset rum. And the other thing, guys, if you haven't subscribed to our Patreon, and any level gets access to our dusty tone patron-only show.

It is a weekly show, exclusive to patrons. It's just really cool stories. That's all it is. Cool stories. There's done deep dives on Salem Witch trials. We're currently at the time of recording, ending a deep dive series into esoteric knowledge and things like hermeticism and stuff like that.

That's been a tough one, honestly, not going to lie to you, but it's great. We just tell cool stories. There's hardly any commentary. It's really just let the story speak for itself. And that's every week. You get one of those episodes. So sign up, support the show. This thing, I don't know if you guys know, takes a lot of work. Ben works full time for haunted Cosmos. So without our supporters at Patreon and like we just couldn't do it. It would be impossible. This show would not exist. Yeah. So support the show, guys, sign up, like, cup or cup of coffee.

You know, if you order a pumpkin spice, whatever, it's probably like less than a cup of coffee. Honestly, with food prices today, I'm thinking so. Yeah, yeah. Jump on there and you guys won't be disappointed. It is, honestly, the best Patreon experience, I think. And we're not biased at the world. No. And we're not biased.

In the world. I have experienced every Patreon. Yeah. In the world. And mine's the best. That was a lie. Yeah, that was a lie. But it was a calculated lie.

And that makes it okay. We know that you know that we know that you know that it was a lot. It's all like through eight layers of tongue and cheek. That's what it is. So check that out, guys. And I think, man, you'll enjoy it. Now, I have an announcement. Do you really?

Yes. We have some conferences coming. I'm Barry in the lead. Yeah. We have some conferences coming up that Brian and I both will be a part of. One is going to be in early March, Pastor Joel Webbin, right response ministries, his conference is being put on, and Brian and I are going to do a panel discussion with Joe. Joel. Joe.

Joe L. Brian and I are going to do a panel discussion with Joel on some Han and Cosmos type topic. We don't totally know what we're doing yet, but it's going to be great. It's going to be way fun. And then in June, 2024. Yes. We have the second annual new. Christendom Press conference.

Yes. That is happening here in Ogden, Utah with Pastor Sovey, some of the other pastors at our church. Joel Webbins coming back for that. Yeah, we got even more guys. We got more guys coming. Joe Rigney. It's going to be great. Joey Rigna Tony, if you will.

Dr. Joey Rigged Tony. That's right. He's actually not coming now since he heard us use that. Yeah, for the first time right now. Joe Rigney, known Haunted Cosmos cryptkeeper and researcher. Honestly, shout out to Dr. Ridney. What a king. So he's going to be there.

And here's the best part. I toured the venue where most. likely going to be holding this at, which is an Egyptian theater just around the corner from our church. Which is already mysterious. It's a 100-year-old church venue. And they were like, oh, yeah, there's the box seats up here. Like, there's two box seats sections. I'll take you in that one, but not that one. That one's haunted. And you're like, and I was like, hold on. Hang on. Because we're going to be doing a live haunted Cosmos show. Yeah. At the conference. We've never tried that. It's going to be so much fun. So hopefully it's really good. I'm excited. A full, like a full show.

Yeah. We're going to be doing it live. In front of everybody. Yes. So if you want to come to that. No one's ever done that before. No. Baron Spanky? Definitely not him.

Of Boer? Who even is that guy? Who is that? I'm Baron Spanky, and this is Boer. Is Gore. I love making fun of Aaron Mankey. We also, he's fine at what he does.

His old stuff especially. I mean, until you. His old stuff is really good. You know. His old stuff. Anyway. Yes. So do we have any more housekeeping?

Coffee. You want to talk about? We've got a coffee line too. Guys, we're just like GM Kings. We launched, do Kristen and Press, we launched a coffee line with a great roaster out in Florida. Yep. Actually, family member, Christian Brothers, called GM Kings Coffee. And we'll put a link to it in the description.

That's the best name for any coffee. It's so good. I don't care who you are. It's so good. So it's a single origin, Brazil, blah, blah, blah. It's delicious. Go get a bag. Medium roast.

Drink it at any time of the day unless you want to sleep at night. Also, I am going to try not to cough into the mic, but we did a test. It doesn't matter where I cough anywhere in this room. You can hear it. So I informed Brian that the answer then is to simply just be a man and hold it. Ben is going to replace every cough noise using artificial intelligence with an Arnold Schwarzenegger line. Get through the chopper. Get through the chopper.

All right, Ben. Let's talk about the cold open. Let's talk about Black-Hide Kids. When did you first hear about Black-Eyed Kids? I first heard about the, I'll call them the B-E-Ks. The Bex. Yes, the Bex. Yeah.

That's perfect. I first heard of them from Astonishing Legends. And this was only a few years ago. I think this was like three or four years ago. I listened to the Astonishing Legends episode, which really focused on that Brian Methel story, that last story of the Cold Open. Yeah, they interviewed him. Yeah, they interviewed him and they discussed the whole thing.

It was actually really fascinating to hear him tell the story, like, with his own words, not on a forum, because you could hear the convict. the conviction in the man's voice where whether it really happened or not or whether it happened the way that he perceived it or not is something that you can debate. But he thinks that that's what happened. And it's pretty weird to hear that

because the story is, I think, really unsettling. I was telling actually one of our friends that this was the first outline that I had ever written that actually had me in my office looking over my shoulder kind of scared. Ben was spooked. Because I was the last one here

It was a little bit later in the day. I had headphones on. And I sit with my back to the door. I don't know why I had stayed in that setup when I felt so bad. But, dude, I was typing it up and I was like, this is really creepy. Because these things are just weird. And then all of a sudden. And I'm just kidding.

It didn't have. That would have been I should have pranked him. No, dude, seriously, I kept looking at the windows like in the basement. Yeah. Thinking for sure there's going to be a B.E.K. It's going to be just. Like, there's no way there's not. And I was just.

There's no way there's not. And I was telling myself, like, just don't let them in. Just refuse to let them in. They won't do anything. Just in case you click off the video too, we're like, guys, let's conclusion up front. Let's not click bait. Let's give an answer up front. If someone knocks on your door and you open the door.

Right. And it's a demonic child with obsidian black eyes. And they say, may I come in? Here's the answer. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. It's done. That's weird. I'm just saying don't let them in. Here's the real answer. Close the door. Close the door. Just close it. Close the door. Just close it. Close the door. But long story short, these things are really weird. Ever since I heard that episode on Astonishing Legends, I've been really fascinated by the idea. Because there does seem to be some ancient parallels with, you know, the Buddhist stuff that we talked about. Chinese legend, Japanese legend. But as far as. the West goes, it's a relatively new phenomenon.

There hasn't been that many things that have happened historically, and it's more so this modern thing that's rising up, and you're hearing a lot of accounts online. You don't really know what to believe and what not to believe. And so I think that we're obligated to address this. Yeah, certainly it's exploded in popularity. You will hear stories like this now told alongside more classic ghost stories all the time when you, you know, people say,

oh, I had this experience or my cousin had this experience or, you know, blah, blah, blah. Since Brian Bethel's story in the 90s, it's certainly exploded in popularity. And one of the things we've tried to underscore a lot here on haunted cosmos, I think it's kind of twofold. One is that not everything you hear is true. Yeah. Like people tell stories for, for entertainment to get, you know, clicks. There's a whole genre of fictional storytelling that's kind of like pretending not to be fiction.

Well, there's a whole, yeah, the whole creepypast of genre is tongue-in-cheek fiction. And most people who are reading it are aware. And most people who are writing it are aware that they're aware, that it's not 100% all true. So that's the case. However, another thing I think we've tried to emphasize that, that, that, there's a through line between many of these different phenomena. And that is that many times the supernatural, and I mean the malevolent supernatural,

will give you what you want. Yeah. It will give you what you want. And so when a story explodes in popularity, like the black-eyed kids, whether the inaugural story of the thing in modern times is true or not, when that becomes very popular and proliferates across a culture, I'm convinced at least that one of the things that you should expect to find is actually then for real encounters of that category to happen.

Especially when in the modern culture where we find ourselves in the midst of a society that like Chesterton said, since they rejected the belief, I think he said, I'm paraphrasing, since they rejected the belief in God, they don't believe in nothing, but instead they believe in everything or in anything is what I said. anything. And so if you have this collective clasp on this object or on this idea, it really actually wouldn't be that surprising to see a genuinely malevolent play be run that just gives them that. Yeah, it says, oh, this is what you're looking for. Yeah, people are obsessed with the macabre. People are obsessed with the scary. They're glorying and frightening. And so why would they, if I was like some sort of opposing force, I would be like, Oh, yeah, let's just give them that. If I was trying to deceive, I would say.

So a lot of what we're trying to do here is to show you some through lines in these stories to identify the commonalities between these various phenomena. Yeah. So that you can be prepared and say, oh, yeah, I know what this is. I'm aware. I know the play that's being run on me. This is, you know, everything from men in black to black-eyed kids to alien encounters to mothman, to Bigfoot. And this actually just goes to show.

when you remember that first story in the cold open with the old couple, they look outside and it looks like it's men and black. Yeah. Like I was, I'm hoping that that's what came across. Like the description of those two men that were waiting for these kids outside. Yeah. And then the men and black stuff from the moth man, especially that we touched them. Very similar. Seems to be a clear parallel.

And so you're just wondering, like, why do these things always seem to be connected? Yeah. Our answer would be that because they're connected because they are. Yeah. Whether it's demonic force or fairy force or maybe they're synonyms or whatever. Fairy force. It sounds so not. It sounds like a kid's book.

Until you realize historically what fairies were like. We've just ruined the word fairy. They'll steal your kids and like eat them. Yeah. Or like replace them with a changeling. With a changeling. And we're like, oh, fairies, tinkerbell. Yeah, Tinkerbell.

And like a peasant in the 1200s would have been like, fairies will eat your soul. They're like, I saw a fairy in the woods. it had antler horns and a human hanging out of its mouth. Yeah. It was lanky. Okay. Anyway. Moving on.

But the parallel between then this phenomenon and what you see in ancient times is that the ancient mythology and ancient lore and ancient religious ideology surrounding pagan and other non-Christian religious worship, you'll often find that there's not, people will say, oh, this is an obviously, it's just completely new and totally made up. because there's not the, this exact thing didn't happen. No one, you know, knocked on someone's wigwam and asked to use their, their conch shell. As far as we know. Telephone. I just, they live in bikini bottom. Yeah, they live in bikini bottom. No one, no one tried to, you know, do that. But, but that's not how the demonic, that's not how the, this, the malevolent,

spiritual, you know, world works. Right. It will change with culture. Again, it will adapt. Right. It puts on what you want. And so, I think it's important to see the through line between the Jin and between these Buddhists and Japanese and Chinese and Indian, like every continent of the world. Even the Native Americans in North America had various mythology that's, it rhymes with this black eyed kid phenomenon. Yeah. Even a lot of the Native American Bigfoot type entities were supposed to have all black eyes. You hear it all over the place. Just this symbol of lifelessness or soullessness, I should say. Europe, the mealing. Anyway, I mean, there's...

But one of the big motifs that I'm hoping people pick up on is the motif of the trickster, this trickster element. And that plays into, seriously, that plays into the Loki from Scandinavia, the Jin, more of the Norse gods, like Hermes, you know, is this kind of trickster god from Greek myth, Thoth from Egypt. And so it really does actually rhyme with a lot that's already happened. And it's just kind of repackaged. And the idea of repackaging, if you make this blanket assumption that maybe it is a demonic entity, if you just suspend disbelief for a moment. Then a lot of the early church and then high medieval theologians had this idea of angels that they could control how they were perceived in the minds of men. So even though they were

incorporeal, a man would look out and the angel would give him an image. This is what Lewis does. This is the trope that Lewis uses in the ransom trilogy to allow him to see the Eldils. Yeah. And so if you assume that demons are fallen angels, then there's really no reason to believe that that ability would have been lost. Or there's no reason to necessarily believe that ability would have been lost. So you can have similar deceptions that rhyme, but that look different enough to actually keep the deception deceptive. Yeah, to keep the deception deceptive. Right. And it's, it reminds us that the weapon of our warfare is not of the flesh. but has divine power to destroy strongholds and every lofty opinion

raised against the knowledge of God. Which is why shooting a black-eyed kid might not actually... That's actually not good advice. That's not good advice. First of all, because if it's an actual child, you will now in prison. You will rightfully.

You should be capital punished. Right. So don't... Don't do it. We cannot be held responsible. Please don't. But in seriousness, we're talking about a spiritual war and so the weapons of our warfare

are spiritual. It's righteousness of Christ. It's the sword of the spirit, the Word of God. It is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. It's Christ our victor over the powers. The Father who has put them to open shame through the cross, through putting Christ on the cross, and defeating death with its own sword,

just like David cut Goliath's head off with his own sword. The father cuts the head off of the serpent with and crushes his head, with his own sword of death. Which, by the way, that's all very amazing. I don't want to... But I recently found out that there's this idea that Golgotha, the place of the skull, is called that because it's the place where Goliath's skull was buried.

And so there's like another layer of symbolism there or type of action there. If that's true, it's really cool. If it's not, I choose to believe it anyways. Oh, man. So it is good to be haunting the cosmos. It is indeed, dude. I'm so glad to be here to do it. We're really locked in.

We're locked in. We're editing the notes, and we were both like, man, a really good word here would be obsidian. Obsidian. You're going to hear us use that word probably too many times. Hi there, faithful listener. If you've been enjoying the Haunted Cosmos podcast and you'd like to see Ben and I live, then come and meet us in person at the Right Response Ministries Conference, happening March 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.

The title of the conference is Blueprints for Christendom 2.0, seven doctrines for ruling the world. Some of our other speakers include Doug Wilson, Joe Boot, and the host of the conference, our friend Joel Webbon. Yes, the whole conference is going to be really awesome. But the best part to me is that Brian and I will be on stage with Joel talking about the most unhinged things imaginable. Plus, by coming to the conference, it'll give us a chance to meet each of you in person. You can register for the conference by going to writeresponseconference.com. Again, that's right responseconference.com. And don't forget to use the promo code haunted to get 20% off of registration exclusively for our listeners.

Lastly, if you're looking for another fantastic podcast, you've got to check out Jules' podcast called Theology Applied. It's on Apple and Spotify, but you can also watch Theology Applied by searching Right Response Ministries on YouTube. Check the links in the description. Brian, you know how sometimes you wake up in the morning? Uh, yeah, hopefully everybody does that. Sure, maybe. But do you ever feel tired when you wake up? Well, yeah, Ben, I used to all the time, but then I started drinking this new drink. It's actually called coffee, and it helps you wake up.

No way. There's a drink that does that, man, I should give it a shot. You definitely need to try this. And when you do, you should buy your coffee from Squirrely Joe's coffee. They're a thoroughly Christian company who sends you a great coffee at an affordable price, Plus, they even donate some of their proceeds to Operation Underground Railroad, helping the effort to end child trafficking. Okay, wait, I actually have heard of Squirley Joe's Coffee, and they are really great. They make it super easy to order exactly what you want if you go to www. www.squarelyjo's.com.

That's www.squarelyjo's.com and click Shop Coffee. And first-time buyers can sign up to receive 20% off of their first order, just go to www. squirleyjoos.com or use the link in the description below. Squirley Joe's coffee, share coffee, serve humbly, live faithfully. All right, let's get into some more

unless there's anything else. No, no. I was just going to say, I think we should just get into the stories. Yeah, let's get into the next story and we'll see some of the through lines that come up and hopefully equip you to do the one thing you need to do. Which actually, by the way, is not just don't let them in.

It's recognized that your power, like apart from Christ. Right. If you think as a human being that you're going to be able to like wage war with ancient, undying, immortal, malevolent beings who hate you. You're prideful and dumb. You're dumb. And what they want to do is not necessarily just kill the body.

They want to destroy your soul. They want to enslave you. So in addition to not letting them in, which I can't emphasize enough, simply don't let them in. pray and call upon the Lord and ask for his help. With that, we're going to get into a story from a woman named Jenny. Let's do it. A woman named Jenny once sat at the small manager's desk in the back corner of a gas station. She had already locked up and was doing the quick task of reconciling that afternoon's transactions

before she was finally able to go home. Since her boyfriend also worked late and she didn't have her own car, she didn't mind the late shift at work. It just meant her boyfriend, could pick her up to take her home. More time together was a win. Don't fornicate kids. Indeed. Get married.

Have children. Honod Cosmos does not endorse the immoral behavior of the story. Moving on. Her gas station was a pay at the pump, so the big lights over the pumps stayed on all the time. Additionally, she had just flicked the closing sign on a couple of minutes before and had yet to turn the store lights off. This was all just to say that when she heard the knocks at the door,

door to the market. She wasn't startled by it. There was usually some late traveler here or there hoping to be let in for a bathroom break while they filled their tanks. She always felt bad for their unfortunate timing because she was actually not allowed to let anybody in after clothes in order to keep her safe. You wouldn't want to haphazardly let in a villain feigning ignorance who had actually been waiting outside of the lit area for anyone else to leave after closing and take her on alone. Well, anyways, Jenny heard the knocks and thought little of it. They couldn't see her from where she was, and so she just didn't react. They, like everyone else who did this, would surely get the hint after a few minutes and just walk away.

Or at least, that's what Jenny hoped. Minutes went by. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. And still, the constant drawn-out knocking had not stopped. It hadn't even changed pace. It was like some robot was parked at. at the door with all the energy in the world to stay there and knock rhythmically for days.

Jenny started thinking that whoever it was must be drunk or high or worse, anything to help her explain why they would go on knocking for so long without getting the message. And as much as she'd like to just drown it out until her boyfriend showed up and scared them off, she didn't have any headphones or anything. It was so distracting and its mechanical consistency made it seem a little bit creepy after a while. Still, she was determined to just get her work done so that she could get out of there the minute her ride arrived. She pulled over the next register drawer and started counting. She lost count about halfway through because of the knocking.

Frustrated, she started over, but once again, she lost count. Leaning forward in an effort to force her ears shut to the knocks, she started counting for a third time. But for a third time, she lost count after making it about two-thirds of the way through. Now she was just angry. She stood up, forcefully pushing the chair away from her with the back of her legs, and walked over to the door of the manager's office. She wasn't about to go out there, but she tried to look at who was knocking through the crack of the slightly ajar office door.

Unfortunately, she couldn't make anything out. Trying to think on her feet, she decided to turn off some of the inside lights at the station, whatever switches she could reach from the office, in the hopes that it would be a clear sense, signal to the knocker that it was time for them to move on. As you expect, this didn't make a difference. Jenny was now at the end of a rope, driven there by a mixture of apprehension and just sheer annoyance at the whole situation. Not having any better idea, she stormed out of the office and right up towards the glass doors, emboldened by the fact that they were indeed locked

securely. As she rounded the corner of the front counter, she stopped dead in her tracks. This wasn't some drunk loser lazily knocking on the glass. It was two little kids. Jenny was startled at first, but soon reasoned that their parents sent them in for a bathroom break while they pumped gas and well, you know how kids are. They'll just do the exact same thing all night and think nothing of it. They don't exactly have the best social awareness of all time. Made sense. Only there were no cars at any of the pumps. There were no cars anywhere in sight at all, for that matter. It was just, just Jenny and these two kids knocking on the glass door that stood between them. The flickering closed sign buzzing in her ears.

Where are your parents? Jenny asked. But the kids just stared back at her, expressionless. She noted how their clothes looked a bit worn out and baggy, maybe even dated as if they were stuck in an early 2000s middle school. She asked about the parents again, this time louder, but there was still no reply. Not even a cocking of the head to signal they didn't. quite hear her. Despite her deeply rooted instinct shouting at her that something about this was

terribly wrong, despite even the rules of the workplace she had sworn to obey. Her motherly impulse overpowered her, and she quickly unlocked the double doors and swung one of them open just enough to poke her head out. Are you kids lost? Do you need help? Can I call someone to pick you up? We want to come in and shop. At the sound of the boy's voice, Jenny's stomach churned and then plummeted to some heretofore unknown depth within herself she couldn't ignore it now she was afraid she wondered now if all of this could be gang related it wasn't the best part of town after all but come on just kids what kind of gang uses such young kids as bait she glanced back at the kids and was alarmed to find that they were closer now only a little bit but it was

noticeable within her there raged two wolves the unstoppable force wanted her to slam that door back close and lock it, but the immovable object just couldn't let her do it. What if they were in danger? What if she was in danger? She told them, now a bit breathy and panicked, that the store was closed, and they should go back to their parents. Invite us in to shop. We know you can.

He repeated the same thing again. Jenny looked up at him, the strange boy who was now only a few feet away from her. In that moment, she noticed his eyes. They were completely black like some crystal clear window in front of a Vantablack fabric. They shined glossy and reflected the station lights, but added nothing to it.

They were all black, a full dark with no stars. With that she shuffled back, closed the door, and locked it as fast as she could. She sprinted back around the counter and into the office to grab her phone. With unsteady and shaky hands, she called her boyfriend and told him to come get over there as quickly as he possibly could.

He was already close. She hung up the phone to sit and wait and digest what had happened, but she could not have peace yet. That same knocking began again, as if none of what had just happened had even happened. She shouted in anger and fear. She ran to the back of the store to turn on all the lights. She ran to the front to turn on the store's radio

and cranked the volume as high as it could go. She ran and crouched behind a shelf in the middle of the store to hide and then slowly peeked around. Those two boys, if that's even what they were, just stood there staring. It was as if they were staring directly. into her. She pulled herself back behind the shelf and waited. She forced herself not to look back again. Eventually her phone rang. Her boyfriend was outside waiting for her. He had seen no kids as he pulled up

and couldn't find them anywhere around the store when he did a sweep to look for them. But as much as Jenny was relieved to be free of this harrowing night, the kids weren't done with her, or so it seems. She was nauseous for a month, living off of crackers and water. She could barely go into work for fear and for illness. But the dreams were the worst part. Ginny dreamed of those boys every night for many weeks. And the dreams, wherever she happened to be, her home, out shopping, her kitchen with friends, she would look over at whatever window was there

and see those black eyes staring back at her as if some kind of malicious intent was kept within them. Dang. You see what I mean? Yeah. This is creepy. It's super creepy. It's just good old fashioned creepy. Here's one of the reasons I think you can see.

I mean, obviously it's evil. Right. But it's sometimes interesting to think about what makes something obviously evil, obviously evil. And for me, part of it is taking a symbol of innocence, like youth, children, something that's actually like this blessing. from God. A porcelain doll. Yeah. Children are... Maybe not a blessing from God. Kids are a blessing. You're not supposed to

see kids and be terrified. Yeah. You know, unless they are having a blowout of the diaper, and then you're like, oh, no. Right. That's getting everywhere. We're never going to get that out of the car seat. Yes, indeed. That is a kind of terror. But it seems like so often what the malevolent spiritual world loves to do is to invert our...

of the good and invert all the light and invert all of the, you know, that is righteous and glorious and make it inglorious and, you know, take what's clean and make it filthy to take what is a blessing and make it into a cursed thing. Right. And so there is a reaction, even for non-Christians and, you know, just image bears of God see this across cultures and they go, that's deeply wrong. Right. It's deeply evil. Yeah, there's something, there's something to that, even with many ghost stories, where a lot of them focus around a woman, like a haunted house or even like a residual haunting, like we talked about in the previous episode, focuses around a woman who is meant to be like the height of man. She's the glory of man. It's the most

beautiful thing in creation is a woman. And it's inverted by this twisted spirit so that it becomes one of the most terrifying things in the world. This is why horror movies use these tropes all the time. It's because they work. When you see a child who is messed up and who is doing these weird things with their body that they shouldn't be able to do, it's scary. Yeah.

Because it's a child. Yeah. It's partly scary because it's a child. If a middle-aged, like, Russian mob boss with a wife beater shirt and egg on his chest was doing that, it would be funny. Yeah. but it's not a Russian fat Russian bomb boss.

It's a little kid. And the same is true for women. This actually reminds me, weirdly, of one of the scariest movie scenes that I've ever seen. It was this YouTube clip, and it literally was titled The scariest movie scene ever, the anatomy of a scene. And when you get things like that, you know that it's not body horror. And so I kind of watch the preview a little bit, and then I was like locked in. And it's interesting because nothing actually happens to the guy. who's like in the scene.

Yeah. In the same way that nothing really happened to this woman. I mean, you could argue that she was nauseous and had night terrors. And maybe that was a product of being around these kids. But nothing really happened right then and there. And what it is is this guy he's searching for something. And it's like a Japanese film, so I couldn't understand anything they were saying. But he went into this old abandoned apartment where a murderer taken place.

He goes downstairs. None of the lights work because it had flooded in the recent weeks. And no one was there. but there were still crime scene tape everywhere. Yeah. He starts walking through the apartment, just taking note of everything, and he looks over at the far end,

and there's a door that's got tape all over it, furniture in front of it, and it's got this weird black spot, like this is going to sound dumb, but Jack Sparrow's hand with the black spot. That's what it looked like on the door. And so he goes over there, and he's like really curious,

and then he hears just the smallest sound behind him, and he turns around really quick, and there's just moon, moonlight coming in. And the moonlight is being, you know, it's hitting the stairwell. And so underneath the stairway is really dark. Yeah. And you see this woman creep out and she's like a ballerina. But it's like all black, you know, whatever they wear. And she starts like dancing over to him as if she's a puppet. Like it's the only way to describe it is it's like she had strings attached to her and she wasn't actually moving. Someone was moving her. It is the scariest

thing I have ever seen. And then she just stops and goes away and the guy leaves. And I'm like, that's what this is like. Yeah. It's this experience that you can't let go of that stays with you forever, but nothing really happened. Yeah, like what happened to you? Yeah. And so I don't know. It's just this like, this clear sign that, yeah, the deception is important to malevolent forces, but also they just want you to hate the world that God made. They want you to be afraid of everything that's around the next corner. They want you, they glory in dread and fear and apprehension, you know? Yes.

It's like a trickster thing, but in the worst way. Like it's trickster, but to be scary. It's not like fun ha-ha. It's horrible and ugly. Oof. You know, in this story, there's, I want to give some credit and then, you know, but also then sweep, sweep the knee at the same time. Like, good job to the boyfriend for being like, I will, I will body slam the black guy kids.

He's walking around the store. He's like, hey. I will run them down in my car. So good, like, good job. But my guy, like, you got to put a ring on it. Like, quit shacking up with, you know, quit, stop fornicating. I want a T-shirt. I want a Hanukasmos T-shirt that says, stop fornicating or the, or the changelings will get you.

Or the B-E-Ks will get you. Stop fornicating or the devil will get you. If you cohabitate your chances of encountering a black-eyed kid go up by like 500%. No, and here's the thing. We know this. It's funny because even the bacon do this in horror movies, it's always the couple at the college party. And here's the thing, guys, I actually don't watch horror movies. But it's like everyone, I'm assuming.

Yeah, everyone knows the slasher horror movie thing. If you're the couple fornicating, like, oh, let's leave the campfire. You're going to get killed. And let's go over to the woods and you're going to get chainsaw massacred. Or. Your soul is going to get stolen. You remember the sleep paralysis episode from season one? Yeah.

So a lot of... I was in it. I was like, do you remember? It took me a second. I was like... Taking a long time. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, I do.

So there were a lot of accounts that I got from other Christians that were saying, like, yeah, this happened to me. You know, it happened once or happened a few times. Never really was that horrible. Some Christians were like, no, that was really horrible. Yeah. Once I became a Christian, it began to slow down. Yeah. And it stopped.

but so, I mean, the vast majority, super majority of the stories were from cohabitating couples that were not married. Yeah. And were fornicating. Or, you know, some otherwise really obvious sin that for whatever reason was advertised in the story. Like it was a key part of the story. Really weird. Really bizarre. And I know like non-Christian.

I guess it's not that bizarre. And they're going to be like, wow, these guys are so, they're like Ned Flanders. The reason that you get black-eyed kids is because of fornication. Who's Ned Flanders? Isn't he from Simpsons? I don't know. I've never seen it. I've seen the movie.

The Simpsons movie. I don't know that I've actually seen much anyway, but I know of the character. Let us know in the comments if Ned Flanders exists. He's like a Fondie, I think. And so people are like, oh, you're saying that fornication is going to cause black-eyed Kinnock? I'm like, unironically, yes. Put a ring on it. The world is not just stuff.

Put a ring on it. Stop fornicate. trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, put a ring on it, get married, make her an honest woman, and let's go. Yep. Like, make some real kids without black eyes. Like, let's flip and go. So, yeah, anyway, that's, there you go. That's, that's my theory about this story. I mean, I love it. Vulnerable because of fornication. Yeah. I mean, that's got to, of course, that's part of it. Yeah. Because we live in a world that's not just stuff and narcissism isn't true. What you do matters.

It matters. To quote Maximus Decimus Meridius, what you do in life echoes in eternity. He was being very stoic, which was cringe. But there's some truth there, for sure. Yeah, yeah. So one of the things that we've hinted at a number of times is the whole changeling thing. And I'm sure some people don't really know what that is. Hopefully a lot of people do. And so that's one of the common explanations of the black-eyed kid phenomenon,

is that it's a preternatural, which is not necessarily supernatural, but it's another world alongside of ours. It's like something beyond, like more than, than natural, but not exactly supernatural necessarily. Unseen and that it's parallel, but not like there have superhuman abilities or something like that. It's just like another, another world. And so the changeling idea is really interesting because it essentially says that the fairy folk, the fair folk, would every once in a while, for whatever reason. For reasons known only to themselves. Basically, the reason that I kept hearing was, well, if someone had a kid that was especially cute or beautiful.

The fairies might take them for themselves. And so the fair folk would steal the kid and would leave a, like, a fairy. A substitute. A substitute. Yeah. That's either like a different kid that's possessed by a fairy or just a whole fairy. Yeah. And a whole fairie.

Just a whole booted fairy. I get a child. Yeah. You get a fake child. You receive a fake child. And so there were all these crazy rituals that people would try to go through. to rid themselves of this changeling and get their real kid back. You know, the modern explanation is, well, the kid came down with some sickness or had like down syndrome or something.

And people wanted a way of saying, well, that's not really my kid. Exactly. Like a defense mechanism emotionally. Honestly, very understandable. And so I think that probably a lot of it was that. Yeah, totally could be. Maybe some of it wasn't if you, you know, if you want to say maybe fairies are real. But at any rate, it's one, if one wants to say.

If one were to Dane, which we would never do. We would never do that. We would never do that. We would never believe that a child could secretly be swapped out with a fake replica by fairy people. Like, well, that's not something. I don't know if never. Is the word I would do. I don't know if I would say never.

Like, let's not count it out. But it is worth walking through a story, a historical account of a supposed change link in order to see the parallels between them and the black guy kids. So I'll start with the story of Bridget Cleary. On the far southwestern tip of England, sometime around the formation of the great and mysterious stone hinge that's far to the north and east, someone or something worked away upon some other pieces of granite. What this smaller ring of stones was meant to represent

or do in its original form is lost to history. All that we have left is a trio of the original stones, still set in place more or less where they were at their completion. If one were to go and see this for himself, he would find the three blocks lying about eight feet from each other in a straight line. The two outer blocks are four-foot-high pillars, clearly formed for the purpose of being there, but not very exciting on their own.

The middle block, though, is more interesting. It's in the shape of a torus, a donut, with a two-foot hole cut clean through its octagonal body. The whole of this middle stone is oriented such that if one stands at either of the outer pillars and looks straight across the line to the other one, he'll be forced to look through the hole of the center stone. It's as if someone had it in their mind to carve a sculpture of the number 101, but then thought it'd be funny to turn the middle zero 90 degrees so that it faced the ones instead of the reader. Now, like I said, we don't have any real clues as to what this mini monolith

was used for when it was first made. But if the stories are to be believed, it was and even still is, far from a simple sculpture. You see, the legends say that it was some place of sacerdotal importance to the early druidic priests and that it remains guarded to this day by a fairy spirit.

Supposedly, this fairy spirit can use the monument, called Men Antol, by the way, to either bless or curse any who approach it, depending on their reason for being there in their manner of behavior. One of the great fears of people more ancient than us was that their children would be taken away from them early on. To them, though, it wasn't just brutal and depressingly simple infant mortality that caused

these tragedies. Oftentimes, the ancient peoples were convinced that their children had been taken by some spiritual power, driven by malice or bound in some way by the witchcraft of a neighbor. Again, to them, the signs that something like this had happened were quite plain. The previously healthy, plump, and cheerful child would suddenly appear pale, sullen, and lethargic. They might have abnormally long nails or large teeth and may even display momentary signs of great intelligence and insight that were not befitting their young age. When this happened, the ancients believed not that their own child had grown sick.

Rather, they believed that their child had been stolen away by the fair folk and had been replaced by an imposter, a changeling. Long ago, a desperate mother grew convinced that her child had been stolen from her and a changeling had been left in its place. At her wits' end and riding the last waves of hope she had left, she journeyed to this monument of Menendol, having heard that a strong fairy there may be able to help her. The story goes that the fairy instructed her to pass the changeling through the hole under a crescent moon. If this failed, the mother would be at a loss, for one does not keep a changeling. They forebode great doom on any household that they dwell in. Fortunately for the woman, the ritual worked.

The evil fay came out of the woods then and there with heads bowed low in shame, to give the true child back to the mother and take the evil changeling away to fairyland once again. But what does this have to do with anything? This is not an episode about fairies or changelings. Or is it? See, many people believe that the term black-eyed kids is just the newest way to describe the same changeling phenomena. This is partly because a number of folkloric sources say that one of the telltale signs that someone has been replaced with a fay changeling is that over time the eyes

will turn color. In many cases, this leads to a being that appears overall human, but who has completely blacked out in soulless eyes. But lest we run too wild with this old idea, let's first hear a cautionary tale of what might happen when we are too sure of ourselves too quickly. In Ireland, the most extreme cure to be used only in the most dire of changeling circumstances was that of fire. If the changeling lingered on and on, refusing to bring a real person back, you could throw the changeling into the fire in your home's hearth. This would cause the fay to escape through the chimney back to Fairyland after quickly

replacing itself with the true person it had been posing as. The real person would then throw him or herself out of the flames to be fully and safely restored to the family who had expressed such extreme concern for them. In 1895, a 26-year-old woman named Bridget Cleary began a lonely trek down the dirt road in front of her homestead towards Kailenegrina Hill in the south of Ireland. The very fact that Bridget was going to this place was already a bit puzzling. See, the only family that lived in that area were the Duns,

led by their patriarch, Jack. For many years, he had been connected to magic arts and communion with the Faye people who lived in that high. place because the place itself had long been rumored to house some sinister preternatural power. For Bridgett, though, this was an on-issue. She didn't lend much credence to those folk tales. Really, she just wanted to catch up with her neighbors and see if they had some extra kitchen items on hand that she could borrow and return later.

So Bridget trekked on and eventually made it to the Dunn Homestead, only to find it empty. The entire family had gone for the day, and especially in 1895, Bridget had no way of knowing when they might be back. Disappointed, she turned around and made for home. Once back, she sat by the fire and tried to warm herself for a long time. She'd caught a little chill in her journey and wanted to keep it from turning into a fever. But despite sitting by the fire all that day and into the night, the chill only worsened and was eventually accompanied by a piercing headache.

After a couple of days, it was undeniable. She had pneumonia. Family members and neighbors came to check in on the girl, and see how she might best be cared for. Jack Dunn, the mysterious neighbor from Kalina Grinnell Hill, even came by, but his visit did little to help Bridget or her family feel any better. After briefly saying hello to the girl, he left the room whispering to his companion. That woman in there is not Bridget Cleary.

This got people talking, speculating, and wondering about what could have happened to the girl on her lonesome trip up to the strange and dark hill. All of this speculation hit especially close. to home for Bridget's husband, Michael Cleary. Michael had been astonished at how quickly his wife had changed in the short trip to the Duns. She was frailer now. Her personality was far more sullen. Her face looked drained of life, and he could have sworn that she had somehow lost a noticeable amount of weight. As these seeds of a fairy and supernatural scapegoat germinated in his mind, he soon let go of all reason. Despite the clear signs of pneumonia, Michael began openly insisting that

Bridget, the real Bridget, had been abducted by the Faye people and had been replaced with a changeling. Feeling confident in his diagnosis, Michael went to purchase a healing potion from the local Fay doctor named Dennis Ganey. This doctor was sure that the potion would immediately help whatever nefarious ailment had latched itself to Bridget. Oh, how wrong he was. The potion failed. Bridget could not stand the flavor and vomited it up. This only caused Michael to double down. He and some neighbors held her down and forced her to swallow the potion, but to no avail. They held her suspended over an open flame in the hope that the heat would prompt the evil fay to flee so that Bridget might return. But this too did not work. On March 15, 1895, Michael soaked Bridget and paraffin and set her on fire.

He was sure that this would heal her finally. He was sure that he would watch the evil spirit die before going to meet his wife as she rode to him from fairyland on a white horse. Bridget did not come to him, though. Michael Cleary was sentenced to 20 years in prison for manslaughter in a disturbed state of mind. Throughout the entire trial and sentencing, he never veered from his conviction. His wife had been taken by the Faye, and he was only trying to help her return safely to him. Dark. Dark. That's a dark one.

Yeah, true story. That all really happened. And it really does just cause us to take a moment and pause and say, maybe a changeling isn't a black-eyed kid. Maybe the person is sick. Maybe you made it up. Maybe you made it up. However, the thing that I really think is striking is just how solid these ideas were in the minds of the common people back then. Like, you know, this guy was a, he wasn't like an idiot, you know.

Maybe he was more blue collar, but he wasn't done. He wasn't like the village moron. And he was so convinced. The record says that even through all of his time in jail, the whole time, he was like, no, I was, I was right. And unfortunately, we don't actually know what happened to, I said the dumbest thing in the world. So we don't actually know what happened to Bridget. She was lit on. Brother Christ, she was lit on fire and died.

You leave it in. You don't edit this out. I'm editing. I know you're going to want to... I'm editing it out. This is the greatest moment of my life. Why was I about to say it? And you just read the story?

He's like, we don't know what happened to Britain. That shows how... Other than that she was lit on fire. That shows how much I'm like... No, we don't. Maybe she was, actually. Maybe she came on the white horse just later. No.

Oh, no. And he was in prison. And he's like, come on, guys. Here's the thing. Here's the thing that I think is really important to note here. Like you said, human beings have an astonishing capacity for being deceived. Right. So when I say that there is such thing as superstition, it doesn't mean that everything people ever say or believe about a supernatural encounter is just mere superstition.

Exactly. But it does mean that the actual real malevolent spiritual world loves to deceive people and knows how to do that. And one of the ways they do that is through folklore sometimes. And next thing you know, they've got people setting their wives on fire. On fire. Or babies. Thinking with clean conscience. That they are doing their actual husbandly duty to protect their wife. Yeah, this is the second cousin of burning your child to Molek.

Right. And I, you know, I'm assuming here that Michael is being sincere when he says all this. Yeah, people are often sincerely wrong. Right, exactly. Many times people have been sincerely deceived so that they are fully believing the deception. But that doesn't give excuse for it. You simply have to be more careful than that. Yeah, you can't.

So this is a good warning, especially even if like people who are interested in this stuff who listen to a show like ours is that you have to be warned that there is such thing as being superstitious and being deceived by the play of the enemy. The point of the show is actually to make you less prone to that. Right, exactly. Not more. Now look, I'm not superstitious, but I am a little stitious. In the words.

It was begging to be said. I know. I actually don't have a point. I teed you. I know you just wanted to say that. Actually, one example. could be, so we announced at the beginning of the show, the conference, it's taking place at this Egyptian theater. Oh, this is so, it's so perfect. And so much of the research that I've been doing for

the dusty tomb, I hear anything about Egypt. And I'm like, oh, it's hermetic. Like, it just is. Yeah. And the thing is, it is. I believe that. Yeah. I believe that the architecture that's displayed on, you know, at some, some parts of the theater are genuinely problematic. But that doesn't then mean that you're not allowed to go in. And it also doesn't mean that they're powerful. Yeah. The reason that I think they're problematic. is because of the message that they're giving people, not because there's any power inherent in the thing. Right.

And even if there were, I'd like to go back to this distinction that I always like to make between syncretism and conquering. So if you go to the stay of churches in Norway, for example, beautiful wooden churches, absolutely beautiful. And they've been Christian churches since their founding to this day. And yet when you go in, you'll see beautiful wood engravings of old Norse myth all over the walls, Norse myth that echo the truths of the gospel in the myths of

the old people. The reason that they did that isn't because they were being syncretistic. All of the practices of worship from the Norse times were expelled when Christianity came in. What they're doing is they're displaying Christ's overwhelming victory over the serpent by hijacking all of those tales to make them actually reflect truths that God gives us in his gospel. And so, So there's a really key difference here between accusing someone of being syncretistic like the Egyptian theater, you know, for example, and actually just saying, well, we're going to go in there and we're going to proclaim the truths of God. We're conquering. It's totally different. We have this story in Exodus. Right. That's, you know, relevant. It's literally the judgment of the

Egyptian gods. They have no power. The best, you have no power here. The best part, too, is that whenever you hear a ghost story, it's always like, so the story of the theater is that there was a, there's these two elevated box seats that are like above all of the, so you don't have to mingle with the pores. Right. Like when they made them. That's of course where I would be.

I mean, I would be one of the poor people. With your thimble, like, you know, whatever. What's the thimble for? Sewing? No, no. There's like a, that made no sense. I meant with like your spectacles on the little glass. Oh, yeah, the little.

That is not a thimble. No, it's just not. Spectacles. It's actually just spectacular. It's always like, so, oh, there was this guy that worked as a janitor here. And, you know, his daughter was with him one day and she fell out of the box seat and died. And so now she haunts the, there's always a story like that that goes along with it. Anytime a building is old, people are just like, this is haunted.

It must be. Yeah. Anyway, go see our ghost episode from two weeks ago. Oh, yeah, that's out by now. If you want to hear more about haunted house. Anywho. Would you like to get control of your money and set up a system that will guarantee, for the rest of your life, tax-protected compounding interest and growth? How about having 24-7

electronic access to your money for funding wisely chosen investments, home improvements, and other large expenditures without going to the mainstream banks? This is not a dream, but can be a reality when working with our sponsor Private Family Banking. You can find their contact information in the show notes below. To make this season even brighter, Private Family Banking is giving away a pair of tickets for the upcoming Blueprints for Christendom 2.0 conference hosted by Right Response Ministries. It's a $500 value taking place March 1st through the 3rd in 2024 in Taylor, Texas. To enter the ticket giveaway, join Private Family Banking's email list by sending an email to banking at privatefamilybanking.com with the subject line,

tickets in all caps, and include your full name and mailing address in the body of the email. The ticket entry period will end at midnight, time on February 13th in 2024, and the winner will be notified via email on February 14th. You must be 18 years of age or older to enter, and only one email per person can be entered into this giveaway. Thank you. So the next thing, the next big motif that a lot of people attach to these B.E.Ks, which we've also hinted out already, is the trickster, the loki idea. This idea, like I mentioned before, where it really affects you, but if you had to get down to brass attacks, nothing really happened to you. You were just scared. It was like someone pulled an

elaborate prank that left you feeling a little rattled. And I really want to tell a story that latches onto that idea. And I think just exeates it a little bit more. So Brian, can you start telling us Richards story? Absolutely. One of the most common motifs in every mythology around the world is that of the trickster, a mercenary of trouble, whether good or bad, is his title. All's one to the trickster. He simply is who he is. He toes the line between good and bad. He enjoys every moment of it. In a sense, he is man's answer for the unknown variable in any situation. If one were to ask a Nordic pagan why the tide turns in a battle for the side of good or why the righteous man suffers blight on his crop yield, while the evil neighbor prospers and spreads his nets,

he might answer, perhaps Loki had a say in it. As scholar Lewis Hyde says it, the trickster is the great boundary crosser. His whole purpose is to be a living monkey wrench, upsetting the social and natural order of whatever time and place he's in. Naturally then, many people believe the black-eyed kids fit into this mold. They seem to be ambiguous in their moral agency. They appear to abide by a self-imposed code of sorts. For example, they'll only come in if they're actually let in. In many ways, this is akin to other entities already discussed on this show, like the mothman or vampires. But even in their following this code of conduct, they inspire uneasiness and terror in those whom they target. This, when compared with the larger motif throughout history,

is a textbook kind of trickster behavior. But one eyewitness account exists that drives this potential answer for what the black-eyed kids are, home for many. Now, the question remains, what do we as Christians do with the trickster category in general? But that's a question for another day. A man named Richard walked back to his brownstone apartment building after work one day. It wasn't a particularly memorable day, just pretty ordinary Thursday as far as he was concerned. He strolled into the main floor of the building. Since he lived there, he naturally had a key to access the door any time, listened for the sound of the door automatically lock behind him and jogged up the stairs to the second floor where his own flat was.

After he had closed the door behind him and walked a few paces into his place, He dropped his bag on top of the bench where he stowed away his shoes and made for the fridge where he'd reward himself with a cold beer to gladden his heart as he made dinner. But just as he turned around to walk across the kitchen, he heard a loud single thump at his door. He paused and stared down the little entryway, waiting for the other knocks to come, but none did.

Richard remembered not seeing anyone else on his floor as he opened his own door just seconds ago, and it wasn't a big building, so he would have noticed. but he figured he must have missed his neighbor walking out of his apartment just as Richard walked into his. So again, he waited for the next knock, thinking his neighbor must be stopping by to say, hey, but the knock just never came. And so Richard went along with his business. As he cracked open the bottle and sat at one of his bar stools to relax and scroll on social media for a minute, he heard a second thump on his door that sounded just like the first one.

Curious now, Richard strolled over to the door and casually opened it. He found two adolescent boys standing there in front of him. As we're now familiar with, their clothes were old, not dirty or tattered like a homeless man's just completely out of date. Richard noticed right away that the boys had their heads tilted slightly down towards the floor of the hallway, as if they were ashamed of themselves. By all counts, it was nothing alarming, especially for someone like Richard who had never heard of the black-eyed kids before,

and it's precisely because it shouldn't scare him, that Richard noticed how uneasy he immediately began to. feel. His heart rate steadily climbed as he got a bit short of breath. And please note, he had only taken a couple of sips of that beer he opened. He was sober as a judge. As Richard looked up and down the hall to see where the boy's parents were, his attention snapped back in front of him as the older boy spoke. We're here for a visit. We want to come in and watch the telly. In that moment, Richard marked how wrong the voice sounded. It wasn't evil or fake, really. It just wasn't right either. Sorry, I think you have the wrong flat.

Well, we'll just come in anyway. Just ask us in now. Richard made no response. As the seconds ticked by with no movement and nothing else said between them, everything else in the world seemed to fade away before both boys started slowly lifting up their faces to look right at Richard. Lifeless and blacker than the night, the boy's eyes sent a chill and shock down Richard's spine as he tried to maintain some composure. What was happening? weirdly, his reflex was to lean in to look closer. This made him notice the pale skin that almost seemed too thin.

As he stared, the older boy spoke again, asking to be invited in to watch television. At this point, the accent really struck Richard. He swears that, having lived in a lot of different parts of England, this kid sounded like someone from out of the country, taking a horrible stab at what was meant to be a British accent. Despite this mounting list of red flags, demanding that he closed the door and try to forget about it all, something about the voice drew him in and made it hard for him to think clearly.

The boy kept repeating the same question over and over again. Just ask us in now. Just ask us in now. Just ask us in now. Just ask us in now. Just ask us in now. Richard was horrified to find that he was against his will, slowly pushing the door more and more open to these things. In a flight of desperation against this strong, strange force welling up inside of him. He flung his head around to look inside of his flat. He was desperate for some sort of palate cleanser that might release his mind from this mysterious spell. He didn't get any such help and so turned back to view the boys once more. But when he

saw them again, he rubbed his eyes. How much beer had he drunk? A second ago, two boys, about 10 and 12, stood before him. But now there were three. Any flash of hope Richard had that this third boy would be normal and would bring some kind of answer to all of this, vanished immediately, as he realized that all of them looked exactly the same. They could have been brothers, the closest of kin brothers you can think about without being identical triplets. The first boy spoke again in a demanding, cold, and sharp voice, just invite us in. The shock this new voice gave Richard was enough to snap him out of his days. He slammed the door shut and bolted it locked, he sank back into the bar stool and finally let himself breathe as he held his

head in his hands. He grabbed his phone to call his neighbor, but hung up when he heard that same thumping again. Thumping. Just outside of his door, was this to be his life now? An endless loop of stress and terror at the hands of some supernatural prankster? The thumping stopped. Richard sat motionless for what must have been five minutes. He crept over to the door. He cracked it open just enough to peek out. Seemed clear. He opened more. Still clear.

He swung it open all the way and sprang into the hallway. Nobody. It was empty. The children were gone. He sprinted down into the main floor of the building just to be sure. No one. It was over finally. Or was it?

So Brian, does anything stick out to you in that story? Okay, so I think we've said most of the big theory things like, a lot of this is fake modern folklore made up by people for Reddit clicks and things like that. So that's absolutely true. I think there's a good chance. Some of it is real, you know, demonic putting on a mask or some malevolent spiritual force, putting on a mask to try and deceive people. Give them what they want.

Right. But there is one theme that always comes to mind for me from scripture when I think about the black-eyed kids story. And it's kind of riffing off of the modern, I don't know, saying that, the eye is the window to the soul. Right? You look in someone's eyes and you can kind of like see what they're thinking. And there's a biblical parallel that's kind of similar to that, a Hebraism that was a saying in Hebrew and the Jewish circles of Jesus Day that I think is really relevant to some of this thinking of like why the eye is so important or so central in symbolism and thinking about like the goodness or badness of a person.

it's in Matthew 6 in the sermon on the Mount. I'm going to read it. Jesus says this, and then I'll explain why I think it's important. Matthew 6.19, Jesus says, Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy, where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourself treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steel.

For where your treasure is, your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness? No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. Super interesting.

The eye darkness connection. That is really interesting. The question for us moderns is, what does Jesus mean by your eye being good or bad? Right. And there's actually a key later in the way. the gospel of Matthew to understanding what he means. If you read a literal translation, because many translations give us the meaning of the saying that's in this Matthew 20 parable, but don't give us the literal. So they'll explain. In Matthew 20, Jesus is telling the parable of the workers at the

vineyard, and the master of the vineyards hiring workers, and they say, I'll work a full day for a denarius. So they go and start working. And then he goes back out. And there's still people there at, you know, and mid-morning. He says, well, you don't have any work. And like, well, no. He says, okay, I'll give you, you know, come work in the vineyard. So they work. He goes back at noon.

Yeah. And he keeps repeating this until like an hour before the end of the work day. And he keeps hiring people. And they all line up for work. And the ones who worked the least go first. And he gives them a full denarius, which is a day's wage. And all the people later in the line who worked the full day, they're thinking, oh, awesome.

I'm going to get like 10 denari. We're going to get, we're going to be loaded. We're going to be dropping. Sheckles in... I don't actually... At the pub. At the pub. You know, whatever.

But the master, he proceeds to just give a denarius to each of the workers. And the people complain. And the master says something to the... It's translated in English a lot of the time, something like, well, it was, you agreed to work for a denarius. Like, do you begrudge my generosity? Yeah. Okay.

But the literal translation of that, do you begrudge my generosity is something. more like, I might get this not exactly right, but it's something like, is your eye bad because my eye is good? Interesting. Okay. And so what it is, is there's a Hebrewism that if you have a good eye, it means that you look on people with mercy and generosity and love, that your eye is good. Everywhere you look, you find an object of your love and affection and mercy and generosity. If your eye is bad, it means you look. You look. on everything with envy and with greed and with I got to get mine. And I don't love anybody. I just love myself. So the bad eye, biblically, is the person who their soul is full of darkness.

And so everywhere they look, they just see another reason to be bitter. Well, it reminds me of that story from the Buddhist king or whatever I came from his name. Yeah, who was jealous of Buddha. Uh-huh. He was about to achieve enlightenment. But Mara, basically, embodied this hungry, devouring, covetous spirit. Exactly. Where actually John Owen in his book, The Duties of Christian Fellowship, labels it really well.

It's something like joy fussing. That's not the words he used, but that's the idea. Yeah. Where you rejoice at wrongdoing, but the inverse of that is that you grow angry when things go well for others. Yeah.

So when something great happens to you, the Christian response for me is to be like, I am so glad. that happened to Brown. But the joy fusser, the covetous person, the one whose eye is bad, would say, should have been me. I should have gotten that. I should have gotten that. It's bad that he got something I don't have. And so the black-eyed kids are clearly just envious people. Right, right. No, I mean, but they literally want to be led into your house. It tells you why, whether it's people making it up or truly demonic, dim-domic, demonic, or it's, you know,

some mixture that the black eye really is a powerful symbol of evil. Because that's what Jesus says, someone who is consumed with their own sin. Like Martin Luther called it like homo incervitous in se. Interesting. Which means the self curved in on the self. Sin does that. So there's something, there's a parallel to Tolkien. There's two parallels here.

One is anatomical. The other is fictional. Yeah. So Tolkien has the eye of sar on. It's the symbol in the third book. A lot of people say that they didn't really understand what that was or what he was talking about. until they saw the movie. And which, by the way, there's no tower of an eye.

There's no giant flaming eye. Yeah, like Berrida is a real tower, but it's just where Saar on lips. There's no eye on top of it. And yet Tolkien continues to refer to this eye. Yeah. And people that really love Tolkien before the movies came out were like, what is this?

And then they realized, inspired by the Jackson films, that it's this eye that only ever looks out, but it never examines itself. That was their idea. the other thing that you could say is that it only ever is examining itself when it's a black eye. So think of, is there any light in your body literally?

Like if you go into a human body as it is, it's dark. Yeah. There's not like a lamp in there. And you can turn it on and like chill out in someone's brain and, you know, write some stuff. Yeah. So if you go behind your eye, it's fully dark, it's fully black.

And so one image that I think is that the black eye is a symbol of someone's whole intent being completely focused on themselves in a way that it's utterly envious. Like, it's the epitome of envy where they would, in these trickster examples, they would even just seek to steal your sense of peace and comfort and joy. And they would seek to sow a seat of apprehension in your life that steals away your ability to just enjoy your evening after a hard day's work. Yeah. That's how envious it is. They even joy fuss at people having a normal day. Yeah. Yep.

Anyway, really interesting ideas. So the powerful symbol, and there's a reason that even folklorically people would turn to that symbol as a symbol of deep evil is that only through Christ can men have their lamp be relit. Yes. Instead of being envious and full of evil, like in Titus he talks about, people are just passing their days in malice. Right. Like, that's the world full of envy and strife and bitterness and dissensions. But the gospel inverts it, re-inverts it back. It restores and improves.

Yeah. And relights the lamp. Well, we know that when Paul is addressing his letter to many, I mean, almost all of his letters include something along the lines of, you know, I pray that you'd be filled to the fullness of the knowledge of Christ. And that's true enlightenment. That's a weird, that's a bad word. but that is what is happening

when you're being conformed to the image of Christ as you are being lightened. Yeah. And we know that literally the way to do that is to be saturated in the scriptures because the psalmist in 119 says that your lamp is a light unto my path. Yeah, your word is a lamp to my feet.

Right. And the word is the knowledge of God and the knowledge of Christ. And so really, the black-eyed kids are almost just a symbol of what man already is apart from Christ, taken to the full measure. Yeah, they have a bad eye. Right.

Their cup is pressed down and running over with envy and fallenness. Whereas our cup in Christ is pressed down and then still running over in blessing and light. They want to invite you in so that they can wreak more death and more. Exactly. It's just the demonic. It's again, it's this idea of the judgment being, I'm just going to give you what you're asking for. Really fascinating. Well, why don't we end, Ben, if it's good with you with just this last story of...

I'm going to stop you right there. It is good with me. It is? You at, yeah. Zoom in on my face. I just wanted to be. He keeps claiming he doesn't know how to do this. I know he does now.

I just want to zoom in on my face. GM king. It's almost the afternoon. Okay. So we're going to talk about, we've had a story of letting them in and bad things happen. Let's have another story of just another, like don't, whether the black eyed kids are real or not, the malevolent, demonic, spiritual. You need to be filled with Christ. Don't let it in.

Yes. Yeah. Take it the shield of faith. Here's, here's another story of what happens. Yeah. when you let them in. In the event that you ever experience something like this, don't let them in.

Don't let them in. Call upon the name of Christ and he will save you. So what happens when you let them in? What happens when you play into their game or attack or whatever it is that these black-eyed kids are trying to do? One woman, a woman named Sharon, found out. And if her story is true, we hope nobody else ever finds out with her. A nurse in a semi-rural Iowa in town,

Sharon had just finished a 12-hour day shift at the hospital on a Sunday. On our way home, she picked up her 10-year-old son from her mother's house, where he'd been staying since Sharon's husband was also at work all day. She was tired, and knowing she wouldn't want to go back out later, she stopped with her boy at a grocery store, halfway between her house and her moms. She only needed some milk and cereal. She and her son ate a bowl together almost every night after dinner.

It was a little family tradition. Now, like I said, he was 10, when these events took place. Plenty old enough to hang back in the car for a few moments while Mom ran in to grab the couple of items, and so they did just that. Besides, it was a safe town, so she hopped out and locked the car before briskly walking inside.

A couple of minutes passed, and Sharon left the store and walked the short distance across the parking lot back to the car. She unlocked it, got in, put the groceries in the passenger seat, turned on the engine, and looked in the rearview mirror before backing up. Her breath was stolen away from her, and she gasped in fear. A young boy with all black eyes

stared back at her in the mirror, silent. He sat right next to her son and stared unflinchingly at her. Sensing the possible threat to her and her boy, she forced her mind and body into action and jumped back out of the vehicle, making her way around to the back door where she might pull her son out to the safety of her arms.

The other boy, or thing, stared at her, never blinking. He offered no objection to her removing her son from his side, opting instead to quietly observe the panicked mother fumbling with the door handle and her desire for speed. Unable to endure the stare, she ran with her son back into the store. In reply to the clerk asking her what was wrong, she must have been wearing her fear on her face. She replied that someone was in her car. This clerk, who knew Sharon personally, ran out of the front door of the store to watch who he was sure was a carjacker,

pull out of the parking lot with Sharon's car. But the car never moved. It was still in the same parking spot, idling, and with the front and rear driver-side doors ajar, just as Sharon had left it. The clerk carefully approached the vehicle and found nobody inside. When Sharon was informed that her car was empty, she remained visibly shaken. She refused to have them call the police. She couldn't bring herself to drive that car now, especially not with her son in it once more.

She called her husband Tom, who quickly came to meet her and drive them all home together. Tom wasn't sure why she requested this, but he could also sense some deeply rooted fear in her voice and so he didn't question. She briefly explained everything to her husband when he arrived and confessed herself to be really shaken by the whole thing. Tom talked Sharon into driving his truck home with their boy. Meanwhile, he would just drive her car. Sharon agreed to this and pulled away from Tom. For his part, Tom made his way over to Sharon's car and looked around it before climbing inside. Once the doors were closed, the horrible smell hidden like

a freight train. It was the smell of rot and decay. He rolled the windows down and started for home following his wife's route on the highway. After just a few miles, Tom was in a bad accident. Sharon's car was found wrapped around a telephone pole completely totaled. Tom was rushed to the hospital where, apart from some superficial injuries that were bad but not life-threatening, he was found to have a decently bad concussion. As this was happening, and before she knew about it, Sharon was at home, drinking tea and asking her son about the encounter. Why was he in the car? Oh, I let him in.

He asked me to. He said he wanted to come to our house and I thought we could play. As he finished saying this, the phone rang and Sharon learned of Tom's condition. She was worried but calmed down when the doctors assured her that he would be just fine. They would keep him overnight to make sure there were no concerning complications. Tom said he had no memory of what caused the crash. only being able to remember that the smell never went away, even with all the windows down. In the days that followed, as Sharon grew less fearful and Tom recuperated from his concussion,

things seemed to be getting back to normal, but then their son fell ill. He had a rough case of the flu, and so the doctors gave him an antibiotic. In the next two days, the flu symptoms had gone, but the boy had developed measles instead. This trend continued as the boy lost and developed new symptoms of a wide array of illnesses over the course of weeks, high fevers, stomach aches, body sores, blurred vision, vertigo, headaches, you name it, and this boy suffered it for at least a day in that time. The doctors were witless about it. They just kept reassuring Sharon and Tom that he was healthy and would recover from all of it soon enough. And then one night, their son stayed awake

complaining about a whole litany of aches and pains all over his body. No matter what treatment was given, he couldn't fall asleep. This went on for hours. before finally and very suddenly, he stopped complaining and immediately passed out. When Sharon awoke the next morning, he was smiling and asking for food, completely at peace and pain free. It seemed like it was all finally over. When asked what Tom thought about it all, he replied, I think that boy was evil. Want more hunted cosmos? Then make your way over to Patreon, where you can get early access to our content as well as exclusive content in regular dusty tombs and

monthly live streams with Brian and myself. So go to patreon.com slash haunted cosmos and sign up now.