/x/ - Paranormal

>>342 (OP) 
They're the free beer van joke but IRL.

>>342 (OP) 
I was surprised to hear that in the version of the story most people hear, letting the children inside is the wrong thing to do. In the version I heard first, it was a sort of supernatural test: those who helped the black-eyed children were fine, but those who did not let them in or help them grew ill.

>>506
That's the first time I hear of that. Actually, I never heard a story where the people encountering them actually allowed them to enter - it always trips off with them NOPEing hard and closing the door or driving off with their car. The horror elements comes from the unspoken assumption of what happens when you do let them in.

>>506
>>507
Implicitly, stories about Black-Eyed Children are "permission stories," in which a Black-Eyed Child (or several) seeks to enter a sanctified space (like a home, or personal property in general). Giving anything unnatural such permission is inherently dangerous, and all cultures and peoples agree on this, except where preconditions have been explicitly placed in advance on the guest or visitor (Xenios to the Greeks, integral to Abrahamic ideal).
Stories where you aren't letting the Black-Eyed Children into something, well, they aren't Black-Eyed Children stories. What they are is a good question. There's a lot of urban legends and historic myths about entities rewarding you or punishing you for how you treat strangers. The Norse always maintained that Odin was a wanderer, for example, and folk myth said that he would come in many shapes on his travels, ever one-eyed, to test the people. Be an ass, get cursed, be kind and help with his request, become blessed.
Figuring out why the Children have black eyes is probably the first step to figuring out why/if the stories are connected. Hyphema can cause it with no supernatural explanation, Greys tend to be described as having black eyes, various Greek gods have been described as having "blazing eyes" with no color specified, so on.
The creepypasta-esque background and descriptions call the whole thing into question, but what if there were some number of hitch-hiking kids that had a congenital defect in the 90s? It'd be interesting to see if sightings had a pattern chronologically and geographically spiraling out from the Bethal sighting in Texas.

>>514
Hyphema does not typically cause a full blackening of the eyes, and may not even affect both eyes at once. Although it indeed would be interesting to know if a real or alleged first sighting caused more real or alleged sightings, just as with the UFO hype after the Roswell incident.

I do disagree about stories where you're not letting them in not being Black Eyed Children stories. What makes them stand out to the archetypical "show hospitality and be rewarded" folk myths around the globe is the explicit fact that NOT letting them in is the right choice, owing to the aura of palpable doom they project. Additionally, the traditional hospitality tale usually has the guest calmly accepting the refusal befre the invariable curse befalls the host, whereas the black-eyed children I heard from are quite insistent you let them in.

>>515
>I do disagree about stories where you're not letting them in not being Black Eyed Children stories.
Sorry, I may have been unclear. Let me reword it:
>A story in which the Black-Eyed Children don't ask you to allow them into a space is not a "true" Black-Eyed Children story. It may be something else entirely.
The default and 'normal' Black-Eyed Children story is exactly about refusing to let them into places due to inscrutable feelings of doom, which is what I was getting at.

>Hyphema does not typically cause a full blackening of the eyes, and may not even affect both eyes at once.
This is true; another potential cause are cataracts and Aniridia, that's why I offhandedly mentioned congenital defects, which don't typically turn the "whole eye" black, but can have pupils sufficiently large that, in a moment of tension, it would be hard to tell the difference.
>Although it indeed would be interesting to know if a real or alleged first sighting caused more real or alleged sightings, just as with the UFO hype after the Roswell incident.
I think even if the original story is true, many are written in a copycat "creepypasta" style, owing to a certain set of interpretations of the phenomenon.

Black eyed children are children with black eyes. They're kind of sexy, but not as sexy as normal children with normal eyes.

>>342 (OP) 
Sometimes when you're dying the coagulated blood can pool in your eyes in such a way that while still alive they look black. 

But other than that....have fun schizos.

>>530
Wouldn't the blood only coagulate after you're dead?

>>531
No. People get clots all of the time while still alive. Elderly people die from clots all of the time and it's one reason they are put on blood thinners in their advancing years.

>>514
Odin stories are about helping travelers because traveling is dangerous. If you don't help messengers and caravans your village becomes isolated and endangers it's self to larger groups of bandits raiding them.

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What if the Black-Eyed children were not actually fully black-eyed, but had dilated pupils due to being drugged?
I remember reading one theory according to which the kids are basically victims of trafficking and are heavily sedated by their handles to keep them complacent. I'm neither a doctor nor a psychatrist, but this might explain a) aforementioned dilated eyes and b) their strange, off-tone behavior, and c) their insistence of you letting them into your house/car because they're locked up in the pizza parlor otherwise.

I mean, if these really were some sort of supernatural creatures, I doubt a simple "No" from a regular mortal would suffice to turn them away.