(A) The Ones With Black Eyes | Archive Ep86

[00:00:04] Welcome to the show everyone, and as always, thank you for tuning in. But before we begin today's episode, I want to say thank you to our newest supporters. Ruben, Lara, and Sarah and her daughters. We truly appreciate your generosity.

[00:00:19] If you're interested in supporting the podcast, you can become a patron at patreon.com forward slash paranormal mysteries, or if you'd prefer to make a one-time donation, please visit buymeacoffee.com forward slash paranormal. And as always,

[00:00:36] subscribing to the podcast and sharing it with your friends is one of the best ways to show your support, and we appreciate it. On May 24th, 2017, I posted an episode that I called Black Eyed Children, Origins and Encounters With The Creepy Kids.

[00:00:54] In that episode, I presented a brief introduction to the subject, and I touched on one of the more well-known encounters, as well as a couple of others that I found interesting at the time.

[00:01:05] The episode was meant to be a prelude of sorts, and now over three years and many encounters later, it would seem that the number, regularity, and strangeness of reports of this phenomenon has steadily increased.

[00:01:20] In fact, many of these chilling tales are no longer relegated to just black-eyed kids, but now seem to encompass a much broader age range of these dark-eyed entities. And although we have more eyewitness encounters with these things,

[00:01:35] we still know very little about what they are, where they come from, or what they want. So today, I'll be taking a closer look at more creepy reports involving these strange visitors, and perhaps one of you will have some insight into what these things actually are.

[00:01:57] I was sleeping and woke up because I felt a hand on my leg, and I realized that I couldn't move. And he'd come across this object on the ground, which was the shape of a flying saucer.

[00:02:09] So he jumped out of his pickup and went down there, and there was four beings laying on the ground. When I raised my head back up, I was turning my head, and out of my peripheral vision,

[00:02:20] I seen something hop to a tree. And it was tall, about seven, eight foot tall. It was black, real hairy, like a gorilla. Welcome to the Paranormal Mysteries podcast, and thank you for being here. As always, I am your host, Nick Ryan.

[00:02:51] I'd like to begin tonight with an interesting article from Mysterious Universe that was posted in 2012. The article covers different aspects of the black-eyed people phenomenon, and it starts out with an encounter that allegedly occurred in Maryland. The article says this, Leanne Davies couldn't explain her panic.

[00:03:13] Davies carpooled to work in 1999, when one night her driver stopped at a small grocery store, leaving Davies in the pickup alone. We parked at the edge of the parking lot with the store entrance and lot behind us, Davies said.

[00:03:29] We had worked late, and it was well after dusk. Davies relaxed as she sat in the truck, watching cars go through the intersection, waiting for the driver to come back. She says,

[00:04:03] Realizing she was slipping into a panic attack, Davies tried to figure out what might have triggered this immediate overwhelming terror. The fear or sense of danger didn't increase or become more intense, Davies said. The initial intensity was extraordinary.

[00:04:20] Then she noticed something out of the corner of her eye. From the passenger seat, Davies slowly looked to her left and found the cause for her terror. I looked over at the driver's window, and there, facing me, was a woman looking in at me, she said.

[00:04:37] Not just glancing in, she had her shoulders squared to the driver's door of the pickup, standing about a foot and a half away from the window, which was closed. The appearance of the woman rammed the intense fear deeper into Davies.

[00:04:53] My heart shot to my throat, and I couldn't move, she said. I just looked at her, and she looked at me. Although the harsh shadows cast by the yellow street lamps obscured part of the woman's face, Davies could see her eyes. The eyes looked empty.

[00:05:11] Davies said that the street lamps had reflected off everything in the parking lot, but they didn't reflect in her eyes. They appeared to be dead, Davies said. Black voids. Nothing there.

[00:05:23] She seemed to have a look on her face as if she knew the fear that gripped me, and she enjoyed it. The woman's gaze held Davies fast. I don't know how long she stood there, Davies said. It didn't seem to be very long,

[00:05:37] but at the same time, the intense fear made it seem like minutes. The woman suddenly turned and got into the passenger seat of an early 1970s Plymouth Duster, parked beside the pickup where Davies sat.

[00:05:52] The driver, who I couldn't see, backed the car out of the lot and left, Davies said. Immediately all fear and sense of danger was gone. It was very strange to me how sudden it was, with it being so intense just a few minutes before.

[00:06:10] This next encounter comes from a witness that was attending college in North Carolina. This is her strange story. Carrie Kistner, age 20, hadn't intended to stop at the Triangle Town Center Mall on her way home from Wake Tech Community College near Raleigh, North Carolina.

[00:06:28] But she did. She wished she hadn't. There were very few people there that day, and I found it strangely eerie how quiet it was, Kistner said. While walking back to my car, I rounded a corner and saw an old lady and a young boy.

[00:06:44] He immediately caught my attention because he was so odd-looking. I had never seen anyone like him before. The boy, about 12 years old, seemed average at first, but as Kistner watched him talk with the woman, he seemed anything but average. The boy's black hair

[00:07:03] contrasted sharply with his pale skin. Dark patches hung under his eyes. It looked like he hadn't slept in weeks, Kistner said. He had a very thin face. As Kistner walked closer to the pair, she heard their conversation. In a quiet but strong voice,

[00:07:21] the boy asked the woman for help. He stood very rigid with his hands by his sides, looking at the ground as she fished around at her purse for something to give him. As I got closer, I noticed he seemed to get more and more uncomfortable, Kistner said.

[00:07:37] The boy began to shift his body when Kistner passed them on her way to her car. Then he lifted his head and made eye contact with her. I froze. His eyes were black as night. Very dull, almost dead, Kistner said. The look he gave me has haunted me.

[00:07:55] The feeling I got from him was as though he wasn't all there, almost ghostly. With his eyes locked on Kistner, the boy slowly turned, and not waiting for the older woman to give him what she dug for in her purse, he simply walked away.

[00:08:12] Kistner doesn't know who or what the boy was, but this memory will stick with her forever. Ever since then, the look he gave me has haunted me, she said, almost like he knew what I had been thinking.

[00:08:28] Also from Mysterious Universe comes the experience of a man named Ezekiel Finch. Finch is convinced that these children and people like them aren't human, at least not anymore. Finch says, I've run into these things more than once.

[00:08:45] Different ones in different states, he said. With a fair degree of certainty, I can tell you what these things are. Vampires. Finch has had two close encounters with black-eyed people, one in Albuquerque, New Mexico,

[00:09:00] the other in the medium-sized city on the east coast where he lives, but he chose not to identify it. Two of my most extensive encounters were within very, very close quarters in the low 30s, Finch said. I watched them as closely as I could.

[00:09:17] Standing in the cold night amongst a small crowd of people, Finch suddenly felt uneasy. Something was wrong with these two people. First, it was their black eyes, flatly staring over unnatural smiles. Then, it was something more subtle.

[00:09:34] People breathe all the time. They inhale before speaking, and that's it, Finch said. When they did speak, you didn't see anything. Not a damn thing. Everyone else had visible breath. They didn't. Finch stood watching the pair chatting with the people around them.

[00:09:54] Steam rose from everyone else's mouths. Not a thing from theirs, he said. Finch studied them closely for the next 10 minutes and saw why their breath wasn't visible in the cold night. They weren't breathing. No movement from their torso at all. Still as a corpse.

[00:10:13] Black-eyed people have become a staple in conversations of the strange and unknown, and almost every reported encounter is eerily similar. Children as young as six years old to adult age approach people alone or with a partner and beg for help. Please let us in. Give us a ride.

[00:10:32] Follow us here. Permission to enter is always a legendary trait of a vampire. They ask permission for a simple reason. If someone invites you into their home, they are less likely to call the cops on you, Finch said. You invite them in. You feel sorry for them.

[00:10:49] Drink with them. Buy drugs from them. Whatever angle they used to get you to open the door. And then they can catch you off guard. Then BAM, you find out why they are actually there.

[00:11:03] Finch's second encounter wasn't from across a parking lot of people. It was a little more personal. I had the displeasure of conversing with one as she tried to convince me it was fine for her to be invited into my home,

[00:11:17] Finch said. It was 30 degrees, snow on the ground, and she was wearing a tiny miniskirt and a spaghetti strapped top, just standing there. As he stood in his doorway, listening to this scantily clad girl beg him to let her in his home,

[00:11:32] he thought she might be under the influence of drugs, but quickly saw something else. There was no reaction to the cold, no visible breath, no inhaling, he said. She could care less about the temperature or breathing. Finch said he doesn't believe black-eyed people are anything short of monsters.

[00:11:53] They want you to be at ease. They want you to feel safe, to feel like they are harmless. They want you to give them a ride or let them in, he said. They are predators.

[00:12:06] This next account comes from a man that was out one night enjoying his usual cigarette when he experienced the following. Jim Stills stood in the parking lot in front of his brick apartment building in Massachusetts,

[00:12:20] the glowing ember of his cigarette bright in the night. He soon found he wasn't alone. At night, I usually go outside to have my cigarette, he said. I noticed that there was a kid. The kid was about 12 to 16 years old.

[00:12:35] Each night, Sills noticed the boy walk down the street toward him. His gait was unusual. I've lived in these buildings my whole life, and I've never seen this kid anywhere, Stills said.

[00:12:48] He would show up around 10 o'clock at night and walk slowly at a sluggish pace along the main road. The boy would move from building to building, checking doors. It was enough to spook me out, so I stopped going out front at night. But he still looked for him.

[00:13:05] Staring out his window, Stills would see him night after night, slowly pacing up and down the street until about 3 a.m. Eventually, Stills forgot about the boy, and one night he went back outside for a smoke. What he saw terrified him.

[00:13:21] Standing right next to the door was the kid, Stills said, standing and looking right at me, asking if I could buzz him inside the building. The boy's face was covered by his hoodie, but Stills saw his eyes. Totally black, he said. Not a single drop of color anywhere.

[00:13:40] Stills told the boy that he couldn't let him inside, and he bolted back inside the building, making sure the door was locked behind him. I had this overwhelming feeling of absolute terror in my body, he said.

[00:13:52] I didn't sleep, and I occasionally looked out my window to see the boy pacing along the road. I haven't seen him for months now, but I won't sit out front at nighttime anymore. Since stories began circulating in the 1990s,

[00:14:09] the Black Eyed Kids have launched themselves into the realm of true spooky folklore and sinister legend, with hundreds of supposed sightings and encounters with them posted all over the internet, and the sightings have occurred all over the world.

[00:14:23] One sighting comes from a Reddit user called Halloween Warning from Portland, Oregon. He claims that it was around Halloween time, and that he had noticed that his neighbor had not put out any decorations, which was unusual for him.

[00:14:38] When the witness jokingly told him that he should get to work getting the decorations out, the neighbor apparently told him that he was going to keep his house dark that year because of a spooky experience he had the previous year. When the commenter asked him more about it,

[00:14:53] the neighbor supposedly told him that some kids had come around to his house the previous Halloween, and assuming that they were trick-or-treaters, he had taken his candy bucket and gone to the door.

[00:15:04] However, when he got there, he was surprised to see two kids who were not dressed in any noticeable costumes, and they were just standing there staring at him with eyes as black as obsidian. The Reddit poster then says this of the events that would play out.

[00:15:20] He said that one was probably around 13 or 14, and the other one was around 16 or maybe 17. Both of them boys. They weren't dressed up, but he remembers the older one was wearing a flannel checkered shirt. He was immediately overcome with uneasiness, like opening the door was a huge mistake.

[00:15:40] They just stared at him, and he noticed that they had really big irises and dilated pupils. He couldn't even see the whites of their eyes, so he figured they were contact lenses.

[00:15:52] He was frozen there, holding the candy bowl like he couldn't slam the door in their face as much as he wanted to. So he nervously tried to smile at them, hoping that they would break character and ask for some candy or something.

[00:16:06] The younger of the two boys said that they had gotten lost, and they needed to come inside and use his phone. That was when he closed the door more than halfway on them and said, No, sorry. And the older one said something like,

[00:16:20] Can we just wait in your house until our parents come get us? But by then he was convinced that his life was in danger, and that these kids must be high on something or intending to rob him, and he just kept mumbling, No, sorry. Good night.

[00:16:36] As he inched the door closed and locked it. He told me he was so scared that at one point they were going to try to break in through one of his windows or something, but he looked through the peephole and they had turned to leave.

[00:16:49] He watched TV with the volume really low so he could hear every sound outside, and he said that he stayed up until like 5 a.m. because he was too scared to go to bed and drop his guard. The whole time he was telling me this I'm thinking,

[00:17:03] Oh my god, this sounds so familiar. Just like the Black Eyed Kid's urban legend. Then I thought, Hey, maybe this dude is trying to scare me, because after all, he does have the Halloween spirit. So I'm looking at him incredulously but trying not to be too gullible.

[00:17:20] So I'm like, Man, that is really crazy. Sounds like the Black Eyed Kid's. And then he just looks at me blankly and says, The what? Is that a movie or something? And I said no, but told him to go look it up online.

[00:17:35] Like an hour later, I get a knock on my door and immediately almost jump out of my skin, thinking it's a demon child. It was my neighbor, and his eyes were freaking huge.

[00:17:45] He swears to me up and down that he had never heard of the B.E.K.'s before, and it's so similar to what happened to him. So we talked a while longer, and I told him that quite a few people probably know about the urban legend,

[00:17:58] and it's possible that it was just teenagers with black contacts trying to freak out people on Halloween. But he said the fear he felt was so primal and came over him in the seconds that he opened the door. Moving on, we have another account from a Reddit user

[00:18:16] who claims this happened one cold October evening, just before Halloween. He says that on this evening, he had decided to walk down to the corner store and describes the three-block walk as being rather mundane. But things were about to get rather strange, and he says this,

[00:18:34] During my walk, I see the normal stuff. The occasional person putting up Halloween decorations and kids playing in their yards. But this story is about something far more sinister. I remember seeing two teens, about 14 years old, knocking on a door, asking to use the phone.

[00:18:52] Which of course I thought was weird, because most teens these days have phones. As I kept walking, they stopped and stared at me for a short time. I felt the blood in my veins run cold. I felt so creeped out, and I hurried over to the next block.

[00:19:09] The next block seemed fine until I looked behind me and I saw that the two teens were following me. I took off sprinting to the store at this point. I saw the sign for the store, and relief washed over me.

[00:19:22] I opened the door and I told the cashier about what had happened on the way over. He looked at me slightly creeped out and told me a story about this same thing happening to him in his hometown and how they approached him the day that he left

[00:19:36] and asked him to help in an emotionless voice. And he told me never to agree to help. He told me another story, but at that point I was no longer paying attention because they were standing at the door asking to be let in.

[00:19:50] The cashier freaked out and locked the door. The teens never seemed to waver or leave. They wouldn't step away from the door. It had been an hour. The cashier and I were ready to fight our way out, but instead he took me out the back.

[00:20:06] One of the teens came around the back just as the door behind us shut. Can you help me? is all he could say. He was closing in on us and his eyes, they were black as a starless night. They were peering right into my soul.

[00:20:20] I couldn't help but gaze into his eyes. The terror. I can't remember too much of what happened next, but I do recall the sound of a struggle. When I came to, the cashier was struggling with both teens. He was calling out to me for help.

[00:20:35] I ran towards them. I grabbed him by his collar and I pulled him between the two, knocking them over in the process. I didn't look back until I was near my house. The cashier was gone, but the teens were still following behind. I ran into my house,

[00:20:51] closed all the blinds, and turned the music up. I got lucky that day, but I'm not sure how long I can keep out of their grasp. I tried to find and thank the cashier for saving my life that day, but he didn't show up to work after that.

[00:21:06] I asked his boss, and he told me that he called over the phone and quit. He said he was moving. To this very day, I sometimes feel the fear of those eyes watching me as I drive to work. I sometimes will look out my window

[00:21:20] and swear that I see them watching my house from a couple blocks away. Waiting. For their next chance. Another report comes from an eyewitness that says this also happened around Halloween, when one evening she woke to her dog Lucy barking incessantly,

[00:21:39] something she didn't pay much attention to at first. After several minutes of this barking though, the witness got up to open the door to show the terrified dog that there was nothing there. But that's when things got bizarre. As soon as she reached the deadbolt to the door,

[00:21:54] she says that her dog had completely flipped out and even lunged at her before cowering and whimpering in the corner. Simultaneously, the witness says that she was hit by a sudden, crushing wave of fear with her heart racing. She explains what happened next. I looked through the peephole.

[00:22:14] I can't explain why I looked, but I did. Outside were two kids. One was just a smidgen shorter than me and didn't look much younger. I'm 21, and she looked to be about 16 or 17. She was slender and pale. Her hair was a light shade of honey blonde,

[00:22:32] and she wore it long, about mid-back, with long, thin, blunt bangs in the front that covered most of her eyes. She wore jeans, a light wash that's popular right now, and a thin-looking olive-colored pullover-style hoodie. She held the hand of a small girl

[00:22:49] who looked to be around 3 or 4 in the same style jeans and a buttoned-down ivory cardigan. The smaller one looked at the floor shyly, but had the same shade of hair, tied back in a ponytail. She held a stuffed toy under her free arm,

[00:23:03] and it was identical to one that my daughter has, as was the style of dress. Had it not been for the feeling of overwhelming dread and fear, I probably would have asked these children in and given them some tea or hot chocolate

[00:23:17] to get them out of the bitter cold. But something about them seemed off. At this point, I hadn't made any noise. I hadn't shushed the dog or grumbled. Nothing. I hadn't turned on any lights. These kids had no indicators that I was at the door.

[00:23:33] The older one then spoke. She had a voice that was mature, confident, strong, and accentless. She held her head tilted downward, and I couldn't see her eyes. She said, We have to use your phone. I stood frozen in fear. How did she know I was there?

[00:23:52] She then raised her head to face me directly, and that's when I saw her eyes. There was a reason that I couldn't see them through her bangs before. They were black, or midnight blue, or a dark, dark purple. They were otherworldly. Our mother is worried, the girl said.

[00:24:11] As someone who has always been interested in creepy stories, I knew what she was the second she looked at me through the door. I have never been one to believe in these things, as I am a staunch atheist and a skeptic when it comes to the paranormal.

[00:24:25] And I had written off many a ghost story from friends and family members eager to tell their tale. I didn't believe it. Still, I couldn't rationalize my way out of this. I was standing with nothing but a thin wooden door between me and a black-eyed kid.

[00:24:42] There was no questioning what was right in front of me. I did not answer her. Slowly and silently, I backed away from the door, Lucy still cowering by my ankles. She kept talking. Just let us in to use your phone. I took another step back,

[00:24:59] and with that step, the tone changed. At first, she seemed polite, but when I took that second step back, she became commanding and hostile. We're not going to hurt you. If we wanted to do that, we would have broken into a room If we wanted to do that,

[00:25:14] we would have broken in. I'll ask again. May we come in and use your phone? Lucy snarled at the door, and I inched backward, though something inside me seemed to be slowly pulling me back toward the door. It wasn't a physical pulling, so much as a subconscious need

[00:25:32] to go back and let them in. I got to my room, covered up the window, locked the door, and sat in the dim light of the nightlight. I heard her call me back to the door once more. And then, quiet. I didn't go back to sleep that night,

[00:25:49] and I haven't slept right ever since. I know from reading about them that B.E.K.'s can't just come in without permission. I don't believe that they've hurt anyone, but I still fear that I'll be the exception. When I told my husband,

[00:26:04] he said that it was probably just a dream. He keeps telling me to forget it. But this lingering feeling of sadness, this dread when the house is silent at night, this fear of a knock at the door, this tells me otherwise.

[00:26:22] The next story I'd like to share with you comes from a writer on Mysterious Universe by the name of Brent Swancer. This encounter was experienced by Swancer himself. And even though it doesn't perfectly tie in with standard black-eyed kid's sightings, there are parts of his experience

[00:26:38] that are indeed similar. Not to mention that his encounter is one of the strangest that I've ever heard. And I think you'll agree. This is his article, which was posted on June 19th, 2017. He says, In my years of writing about all aspects of the world of the weird,

[00:26:58] I have often been asked if I myself have ever seen something I could not explain, or if I have ever had my own strange experiences or encounters. I have typically always been rather vague and evasive on this point. Not really giving a clear answer to this,

[00:27:15] and certainly not divulging anything of importance. Until now that is. You see, my answer to this question of whether I have ever experienced the unexplained is, in short, yes. Quite a resounding yes, in fact. I'm not sure why, but I've always kept these strange experiences to myself.

[00:27:36] I suppose it is the same for many others out there, and I guess everyone has their own reasons for this. Maybe they think that no one will believe them. Maybe they think that those around them will think that they are crazy,

[00:27:47] or treat them as some sort of pariah if they were to come forth with their bizarre stories. Maybe they just think that these are things best left to the confines of their minds. Now obviously, many people out there do indeed come forward with their accounts,

[00:28:03] but I suspect that there are even more who have not. I have long been one of these. This may seem strange for you to hear, considering I am a writer on these very mysteries, but I have my reasons. However, I recently had an exchange with someone

[00:28:19] on the topic of why people keep their paranormal experiences to themselves, and it was quite profound, to say the least. And it made me think. I did a bit of soul searching, and I decided that I would come out with my own experiences.

[00:28:33] These are things which I have never told anyone, not even my closest friends or family. They have remained caged up within me, anomalies that have sat like awkward, jagged rocks upon the landscape of my mind for far too long. They are deeply personal,

[00:28:50] and even now it feels odd to let them out and put them out there, like I should hold onto them and keep them hidden. Even now as I write this, I am hesitant to let them go, wary of losing them into the wilderness of public knowledge,

[00:29:05] but I have resolved myself to doing so. For better or worse. It just seems for some reason like it is finally time and that this is the right thing to do. I am tired of feeling so alone with it. I have actually had three separate occasions

[00:29:21] where I have witnessed, well, something beyond what I can explain. The first most dramatic and perhaps the most utterly inexplicable of my experiences is actually a hard one to write down since it was so traumatic for me and it still inspires fear within me

[00:29:38] and I'm still unable to really wrap my head around it even after all these years. This happened to me when I had just turned 18 years old, just before I was about to head off to college and I had decided to take a road trip

[00:29:52] from my hometown in California to Denver, Colorado to visit a friend of mine there. I did not have much money and my parents thought it was a bit of a whimsical idea but they let me go through with it anyway. I thought at the time

[00:30:05] that I could handle myself and at 6'3 and pretty muscular I suppose I have a somewhat intimidating enough presence even then that I foolishly thought I would not run into too many problems along the way that no one would mess with me. Anyway,

[00:30:22] it was just to be a drive out there after which I would stay two days and then come back. Simple. There was no real reason to think it was going to be a particularly bad idea at the time. Along the way, somewhere in the wilds of Nevada

[00:30:37] it became obvious that the drive was going to be a lot longer than I had expected. I had left my home too late and I was getting tired and sleepy. If you have ever taken this drive then you might know that there are vast swaths

[00:30:50] where there is not a soul in sight for miles around. It might as well be the surface of the moon. There was really not much to see along this route. It was dark and empty and with the endless monotonous road ahead and the hypnotizing lane lines flickering by

[00:31:07] I caught myself nodding off at the wheel on several occasions. I did not really have the money for a hotel to stay at. I barely had enough money for food and gas and so I decided to pull over at a highway rest area off the highway

[00:31:20] and take a nap in my car. I only planned to sleep for a couple of hours and then head off along that dark, desolate highway once more. The area was actually rather remote with nothing around and at the time there were no other vehicles there

[00:31:36] giving it all a rather bleak and imposing atmosphere that made me wonder if it was a good idea to be there or not. But I ended up parking putting my chair back and falling asleep even as I turned over the idea

[00:31:49] of just continuing on my way in my head. I awoke to a tapping on my car window. I jumped awake and it was light enough that I at first thought it was early morning. I was somewhat startled to see a young man standing there peering in at me.

[00:32:06] He was a skinny young man who looked to be perhaps in his early 20s or late teens, not much older than myself at the time and he was dressed normally, certainly not a vagrant or appearing particularly threatening in any noticeable way although I immediately wondered

[00:32:22] why he was out there in the middle of nowhere and what he wanted. He then simply and calmly said, Open the door. At this I immediately had a distinct sense of palpable menace, some undefinable feeling of threat and I was glad that I had locked

[00:32:39] the doors of my vehicle. I simply said no but he demanded again, Open the door. This time in almost a growl and I soon noticed that there were two others with him lurking in the background and that there was also a pickup truck nearby

[00:32:54] which I assumed to be theirs. Upon this truck was mounted a spotlight that was turned on and pointed at the ground which was why the whole area seemed to be surprisingly illuminated. In actuality, it was still the middle of the night. This is where things get bizarre indeed.

[00:33:12] Thinking that it was just some kids screwing around, I took out a knife that I had brought with me and just held it there where he could see it which I guess was pretty stupid in retrospect but remember I was just a dumb teenager

[00:33:25] and I thought this would maybe scare them away. It, in fact, had quite the opposite effect. The young man became absolutely infuriated and let out what I can only describe as an animalistic howl or wail quite chillingly inhuman in its intensity as he violently shoved my car

[00:33:43] to send the vehicle quaking and I actually felt it lift from the ground a bit. It was breathtakingly horrifying, totally out of nowhere and was a jarring, frightening display of strength I would have never expected from a person let alone someone with such a slim frame.

[00:34:00] It is hard to describe the amount of alarm I felt at that moment. This is when I noticed that the two other people with him in the background had something quite off about them. I could see their eyes were either glowing or reflecting the light

[00:34:14] like those of a cat, I don't know which. Either way, you might recognize this as something that human eyes do not do. It also seemed that they were, I don't know how to describe it, blurry, fuzzy. You know when you're watching TV with bad reception

[00:34:30] and the people on the screen look jumpy and distorted. It was like that. They seemed distorted, broken and vague as if infused with some sort of static. It was almost as if they were tenuous, having trouble with staying in focus, staying in reality, having difficulty existing

[00:34:50] or that they were quivering or moving to and fro at great speed. It was really very strange, and although I suppose I am a decent writer, I find it quite hard to fully describe it in words. The next thing I knew, one of them,

[00:35:04] a girl around the same age as the man, who was now panting and scowling like a rabid dog, his visage twisted and contorted beyond the thin pane of window separating us, was suddenly just there beside him. One moment she was standing in the background some distance away,

[00:35:21] and then she was just right there in the blink of an eye. It was abrupt and disorienting to say the least. Then she also said, Open the door. Now. This is when I snapped out of my shock and started my car. I honestly didn't think it would start,

[00:35:39] thinking that surely they must have done something to it to cripple it and that I would be stuck there in this metal prison until they smashed their way in or someone came along to help, which was a slim possibility. Considering the sheer emptiness of the road

[00:35:53] and the fact that the chance that the few vehicles passing by in the night would even know something was wrong was a remote possibility at best. To my genuine surprise, the car did start and I tore out of there as fast as I could. As I did so,

[00:36:09] the spotlight on the pickup truck immediately sprung to life and swung up to home in on me, blinding in its brightness and following my car with perfect precision. I stepped on the gas and as I did, I was shocked to see that one of them,

[00:36:24] not the original man or woman, probably the other one or even another hiding in the shadows who I had not seen, was now running along the side of my car. I think it's important to mention that at this point I was almost to the actual highway

[00:36:38] and steadily picking up speed, perhaps going about 40 miles an hour at that moment. Yet, there this person was, easily pacing me as the spotlight pierced forward to track me. As he ran, barely even looking tired, he reached out to knock on my window

[00:36:55] and it was all so totally strange and frightening that I remember I let out a scream, something that I usually do not do and which I can probably count on one hand how many times I've done it. As I reached the highway and picked up speed,

[00:37:09] he tried to keep up with me, banging on my window the whole time with increasing force and I probably made it up to about 50 miles per hour before he finally fell behind and faded into the distance. It was all absolutely mind-boggling.

[00:37:25] I just drove off as fast as I could, my foot heavy on the pedal and although that persistent spotlight stayed on me until I was out of sight, the truck oddly did not give chase. I hauled ass until I reached an off-ramp into a populated place

[00:37:40] and I must have sat there at a diner for about three hours, shaking and trembling at the whim of the adrenaline that was coursing through me. I could not keep my hands still, I must have looked like a mess and I remember the waitress asking

[00:37:54] if I was all right on numerous occasions but I lied and said that I was just frightened because I had almost crashed out on the road. I don't know why I didn't tell anyone or call the police. It is probably because I thought that they wouldn't believe me.

[00:38:09] Hell, I barely believed it and also the fact that I was eager to reach my destination and did not want to deal with the hassle, especially since I was in one piece despite my rattled state. I never did tell my friend in Colorado about it and indeed,

[00:38:24] I've never told anyone at all about it until now. I was terrified to tell anyone about what really happened. This may all sound very dramatic but I assure you it did happen. I am not exaggerating and to this day it is rather traumatic to think about.

[00:38:40] I truly feel that I was not meant to make it out of there alive and that I should have died or even worse at that rest area. My life was surely in some form of danger. I often find myself wondering how many other travelers

[00:38:53] along that desolate stretch of highway were confronted by those odd strangers and what would have happened to me if I had opened my door as they had demanded. To this day, it gives me duress just to bring up these memories. Adding to this

[00:39:09] is that I have never been able to figure out just what exactly happened there on that highway or just who or what it is that I encountered. It is so bizarre and inexplicable and doesn't even clearly fit any strange phenomena that I know of. Who were those people?

[00:39:26] Were they even people at all? If not, what were they? Were they wraiths of some sort? Maybe black-eyed kids? Shadow people? Vampires for Pete's sake? What? I mean what in the world was going on there? I have absolutely no answers for it and the whole incident

[00:39:44] leaves me baffled and not a little frightened to this day. Now, I like to think of myself as a reasonably intelligent and rational person. I was not drinking at the time and was not doing drugs. I would really like there to be a mundane explanation for it all

[00:40:00] but I can find none. I can't even really find any known phenomenon out there that really fits in with what I saw. It is all completely and utterly bizarre and confounding to me. Like I said, even though Brent's experience is slightly different than most encounters with these people,

[00:40:20] there are parts of it that seem very similar and caused me to wonder what these kids wanted. Perhaps if he had been able to get a closer look at them, he would have noticed the same coal black eyes that so many others have described.

[00:40:34] Have you encountered black-eyed people? Perhaps you know someone who has or maybe you have a theory about what these entities are. If you've witnessed something unexplainable and you'd like to have your story shared on the podcast, please contact me at paranormalmysteriespodcast at gmail.com or visit paranormalmysteriespodcast.com

[00:40:56] and click on the Tell Your Story link. All of our contact information can be found in the show notes. Until next time, from all of us at the Paranormal Mysteries Podcast, thank you so much for listening and please remember, don't wait for the end

[00:41:11] and don't wait for the unknown to come to you. Get out there and find it.