Halloween Terror

I first became aware of the story of the “Hollow-Eyed Girl” around Halloween 2015. A friend of mine on social media had related a bizarre experience she claimed occurred on her way home from work one evening.

It was just after dark when, while driving along a relatively deserted street, the woman had seen a young girl standing in the middle of the roadway. The child had long black hair and was wearing a lacy white dress. She looked to be no more than ten years old.

My friend stopped to offer assistance to the child who immediately ran up to the car and started demanding to be let in. The woman refused. She thought it strange that the child kept her face hidden with her hands as she spoke.

The woman asked the girl where her parents were. The child wouldn’t answer. She just kept repeating the same thing over and over: “Take me with you.”

The woman didn’t know what to do. Feeling sorry for the child, she opened the car door and was about to let her come inside when the girl dropped her hands, revealing that she had no eyes. There were only deep, black hollows where the orbs should have been.

In a panic, she pushed the girl away and shut the car door which only served to infuriate her. Almost instantly, she began pounding on the side of the driver’s door and screaming: “TAKE ME WITH YOU!”

Terrified, the woman sped away, the screaming girl running along behind her. Eventually, she lost sight of the child. She phoned authorities and told them of her encounter with the ghostly girl who had no eyes. To her surprise, the officer she spoke to informed her that they had been receiving calls about the girl all evening.

My friend’s warning had been this: beware of a young girl with long black hair who may attempt to flag you down demanding a ride. Whatever you do, keep driving. This was not a child, but something evil that had taken the form of something familiar and nonthreatening.

The message was shared time and time again until someone finally let the cat out of the bag: the whole episode was a hoax. Ignore the post; there are no demon children out there trying to hijack unsuspecting motorists.

The whole thing got me thinking, so I did a little research and found that sightings of the Hollow-Eyed Girl, as she is known, have been reported since the early 1980s. It was in the Cannock Chase area of the United Kingdom that the first reported encounter took place. It wouldn’t be long before similar stories found their way across the Atlantic and then worldwide.

The alleged encounters were all strikingly similar. Motorists, and sometimes pedestrians, would stop to help a child who was usually standing in the middle of the street. Sometimes the child, almost always a girl with long black hair, would be standing there silently. At other times, she would be screaming.

It was nearly impossible to get a good look at the child, at least at first. Her eyes were always obscured. Sometimes a hoodie was pulled down over her face. On other occasions, she would be wearing sunglasses or simply covering her face with her hands. Once the barrier came down and the eyes, or lack thereof, were revealed panic would ensue. Besides having black pits instead of eyes, the children were also said to have very white or bluish skin, much like that of a corpse.

Encounters with the children happened in both the daylight hours and late into the night. Although most accounts involve a lone child, there have been several occasions when people claim that groups of these terrifying ghostly children accosted them.

Usually, it is around Halloween when someone will answer a knock on their door. They open it and find a group of children, all with jet black hair and old-fashioned, frilly white clothing standing on the doorstep. The strangers all either have their heads down or are hiding their faces with their hands.

One of the children will speak up and ask, in a quiet voice, to come inside. When the homeowner questions why the child needs to come in, they receive no answer. The child will again ask to enter the home, only this time they will raise their voice. This continues until the child is shouting to be let in.

The frightened homeowner usually shuts the door and locks it at this point leaving the angry children to pound on the door and turn the doorknob in an attempt to gain entry. Police are called to the scene, but the children are long gone by the time they arrive. No trace of them is found and the incidents are filed away as Halloween pranks.

There have also been reports that the images of these children have been inadvertently caught on film. A mother who had taken her children on an outing to a park one day for a picnic had gathered them together for a family photo. She snapped the picture and thought nothing more of it. That is until later when she saw the developed photo.

When the woman received the pictures back from the chemist a few days later, she noticed something very odd about the picture she had taken that day in the park. There, standing behind her children, was the image of another child. This was definitely not a member of her family. This child had no eyes.

The woman was absolutely positive that the child had not been there when the picture was taken; she would surely have seen her. If the interloper had been present, she wasn’t visible to the naked eye. She had, nonetheless, shown up on film.

So, who are the children with the white, ghostlike faces and hollow pits where their eyes should be? Since most sightings occur in streets, railway stations and subways, it has been speculated that they are the spirits of children who have perished on the tracks or in automobile accidents.

It is always possible that the sightings are the result of overactive imaginations or mass hysteria. Even so, it is curious that the alleged encounters are strikingly similar, right down to the smallest details.

While some of the stories are undoubtedly fakes, others seem quite plausible. Perhaps, as many devotees believe, every good urban legend does indeed begin with at least a grain of truth.

Keeping this in mind, it could be that, somewhere just outside of our reality, the spirits of children taken long ago, still roam the land of the living in search of refuge. Maybe, every now and again, they cross over to this side in their quest for a home. If this is the case, they couldn’t pick a better time of year than Halloween when ghouls and goblins and children with no eyes can walk among us and be accepted—that is, until their secrets are revealed.

For more stories of the paranormal and unexplained, look for my books at amazon.com/author/cindyparmiter, or online wherever books are sold.