Back in 1998 when I first heard of this paranormal story from Brian Bethel a fellow Abilenian, friend, and a journalist for the Abilene Reporter-News. It’s the story of his encounter with the Black-Eyed Kids also known as the B-E-K. The first encounter ever in the United States happened right here in Abilene, Texas in 1996. It's now the stuff of urban legends.
While Black-Eyed Kids seem creepy, eerie, and or scary to everyone else, I didn’t think much of it because, as a young kid myself, I had seen some of these so-called “Black-Eyed Kids” when I was growing up in Madrid, Spain in the late 60s. I just thought it was a physical eye impairment and or a birth defect much like mine. It was much later when I learned that the Black-Eyed kids are sometimes referred to as ‘the devil children.’
Today, little is still known about the B-E-K’s but there have been more sightings, some in the U.S. but more around the world. The majority of the sightings recently have been in England, where sightings are a common occurrence.
After I spoke with Brian Bethel this past week, he explained to me exactly what transpired during his encounter. He was trying to pay here’s Internet bill to Camelot communications that was located at the corner of Barrow and South 1st St. He pulled over next at the Westwood Theater parking lot on North 1st St near Westwood, to write the check to pay his bill.
Utilizing the light from the Westwood Theaters' marquee while writing the check Bethel said he was unaware of what was going on around him. Then came a tap on the drivers-side window of his car, he looked up to see two young kids, they appeared to be a 9-year-old and a 13-year-old, both were wearing hooded sweatshirts.
The older of the two kids tapped on the window asking if he (Bethel) would give them a ride to their mother's house so they can get money to come back and see the movie “Mortal Combat” it was then that Brian noticed both of the boy’s eyes were completely blacked out, no whites in their eyes anywhere, immediately he got a very sick and eerie feeling.
Brian said “the boys kept staring at me with those cold coal-black eyes. My fear must have been easily detected because the older of the two boys that had been doing all the talking started pounding on my window stating we can't come into your car until you invite us in, you have to let us in. I rolled up my window all the way, put my car in reverse, and started to move back all the while the two boys were now yelling you must let us in!”
Brian went on to tell me that as much as he still doesn’t know what really happened that night he says he knows without exception what happened that night was real, and that when he looked back into his rearview mirror and the two boys had mysteriously disappeared.
Furthermore, Dr. Emily Zarca, the host of the Monstrum PBS Television Documentary (as seen above) researched and reported on this very incident with Brian Bethel in Abilene. She goes on to say that she too would have not allowed those B-E-Ks in her vehicle either.
As one of the hosts and psychics from the Discover Channel’s “Ghost Hunters” TV show told Brian “had he let those Black-Eyed Kids in his car, he might not have been alive today. If are approached by some Black-Eyed Kids, what would you do?