The man with the black eyes

Relatively recently (about 20 years ago), the legend of people with black eyes began to gain popularity. Usually they are referred to as ghosts, but due to the frequency of their appearance, they can be brought into a separate phenomenon.

These creatures look exactly like humans, only their eyes (sometimes only the iris, and sometimes the entire white) are filled with black. Visual age, according to eyewitnesses, is most often children's, but there are also adults.

It should be noted that the color of the eyes can be not only black. They say that similar creatures are found with completely white, red, and even glowing eyes.

The very first story about encounters with these creatures is considered to be the description of a meeting with them by journalist Brian Bettler:

On January 16, 1998, at about 10 p.m., he stopped in the well-lit parking lot of a movie theater to fill out an Internet bill. Suddenly, someone knocked on the window of his car. They were two boys about 13 years old. One of them turned to the journalist, explaining that they wanted to watch the film, but forgot the money at home. Would he do them a favor and drive them home?


The boys seemed perfectly normal, but Bettler was beginning to feel a terrible, inexplicable fear. Something in their behavior, in their speech (only one boy spoke, and he spoke not as a teenager, but as an adult, confidently and without embarrassment), in their movements was very strange and alarming. Brian suddenly realized that the movie they were supposed to be watching had started about an hour ago and was about to end. He didn't want to let the children in the car, but he realized that the hand, not obeying him, was reaching out to open the door.


When their eyes met, Brian froze in horror: the children's eyes were coal-black. The pupils and white iris were absent. All black eyeballs. For just a moment, Brian looked away. But it was enough to bring him back to his senses. The reporter pulled his hand back. And the boys started talking again: "Come on, mister, we won't do anything to you, we don't have any weapons, let us in. We can't go in until you tell us we can. With an incredible effort, Bettler shook himself out of his stupor and stepped on the gas. The car started moving. Brian looked around, and there wasn't a soul in the parking lot.


"I believe that I was in danger, and I believe that it came from something extraordinary. What I went through then was one of the most terrible events in my life, and I have no desire to face such a thing again," Brian repeated more than once.

In the same 1998, Brian Bettler created a list of paranormal phenomena associated with such creatures. People from Texas, Portland, and Oregon sent him their impressions of sudden encounters with "black-eyed children"by mail. However, by 2013, the network began to believe that the legend of people with black eyes was based on one of the series of the show Weekly Strange (exploiting interesting, shocking and strange topics), in which reports of cases of such children were published.

Unfortunately, we could not find any official evidence, photos or videos of such meetings, although there are quite a lot of eyewitness accounts.

Let's highlight the common features in the reports of these eyewitnesses:

• unusual eye color;
• almost all meetings take place either at night or late at night;
• creatures usually interact with an eyewitness, and most often they want to be sure to let them into a house or vehicle.

Descriptions of these creatures and their behavior overlap with stories about vampires rather than ghosts. But who are they? Creatures from a parallel world? Aliens? Demons?

From rational explanations, in addition to errors of perception and deliberate falsification, which can explain any phenomenon, we can distinguish the following:

Body modifications. Now tattoos are available not only on the body, but also on the eyes. In this case, people paint the iris or the entire visible eyeball in some color.

Colored lenses. They can also have any pattern and color, and occupy almost the entire visible part of the eye.

Diseases of the eye. The eyes may have an unusual appearance due to some disease. Examples include aniridia or cataracts, as well as other diseases (including drug intoxication and intoxication) and injuries that lead to changes in the shape or color of the eyes. So, with burst blood vessels, the eye protein can take on a red hue, and because of Adi's syndrome, at least one of the pupils is abnormally dilated.

Separately, you can select just an unusual eye color, given to a person from birth. For example, albinos often have red or purple-tinted eyes.

Those who deliberately distort their features often do not stop at changing the color of their eyes. They can insert implants, deform limbs, etc., which makes them even more like representatives of another world.

Now this topic is already fueling itself. Over time, from urban legends and descriptions of eyewitnesses, creatures with black eyes appeared on movie theater screens and book pages. These images were used in the TV series "The X-Files" and "Supernatural", and in 2012 the film "Children with Black Eyes" was released, which helped to popularize them.