Joshua Cutchin - Thieves In The Night: A Brief History of Supernatural Child Abductions

Of my young Harry. O that it could be proved

That some night-tripping fairy had exchanged

In cradle-clothes our children where they lay,

And calld mine Percy, his Plantagenet!

Then would I have his Harry, and he mine.

William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1

Those are my persons!

Until this moment, the California mother and her two-year-old son had lived a relatively uncomplicated life. It all changed when the boy found the book splayed on the floor, eliciting kisses and affection.

It was his mothers copy of Budd Hopkins Intruders, the seminal 1987 work that further popularized the alleged alien abduction phenomenon. The objects of the childs affection were illustrations of spindly, large headed, black-eyed alien Greys, a depiction now deeply engrained in popular culture.

Suffice to say, this outpouring of emotion alarmed his mother. She listened, disturbed, as her son described a woman and man who took him aboard some type of craft for regular physical examinations.

Further details emerged when the mother and son spoke to John P. Timmerman, who interviewed them on behalf of the Center for UFO Studies in 1988. Each encounter began with being flown out the window into a multicolored spaceship where the entities told the boy to remain calm while they hurt his eyes, forehead, and mouth. Chillingly, the interview concluded when he whispered to his mother that the beings would get mad at him for speaking with Timmerman.

Theyre my friends.

Regardless of the accounts veracity, the boys story suggests an unsettling trend: are children, for whatever reason, more prone to paranormal activity?

Perhaps such encounters are simply tall tales, as we all invented in our youth. But to the Forteansomeone studying the subjects popularized by anomalist Charles Fortthese stories carry more weight, neatly fitting into a historical continuum of interaction with the supernatural realm. The remarkable consistency of such accounts, recorded since mankinds earliest days, suggests something more objective than mere storytelling is at work.

Ifadmittedly ifsuch accounts are true, perhaps children are subject to paranormal encounters because their souls, freshly minted, are not so far removed from Otherworld. In animistic cultures, children are more susceptible to spirit-borne illnesses than adults, their souls weaker and not fully attached to the physical form.

What fascinates me is why so many children have recently been witness to UFO experiences, researcher David Rees wrote of the trend in 1979, which has shown little sign of abating since. Rees also noted how some sightings over densely populated areas are exclusively witnessed by children, who also prove steadfast in their accounts. Is it that the children are tuned in to see somethingand

Todays children continue to encounter a robust spectrum of alleged paranormalia. They recall past lives with greater ease, serve as the focus for poltergeist activity, entertain imaginary friends, and witness entities, apparitions, UFOs, and cryptids with an apparent frequency far greater than adults.

They are also abducted more often.

Children vanish more frequently than any other group, wrote noted author and paranormal researcher John Keel in 1971s Our Haunted Planet. Were not talking about ordinary runaways. In August, 1869, thirteen children vanished in Cork, Ireland. No sign of kidnapping or foul play. The same month there was a wave of disappearing children in Brussels, Belgium. Another group of youngsters melted away in Belfast in August, 1895. And again in August 1920, eight girls (all under 12 years of age) disappeared forever in Belfast Children have been disappearing in large numbers for centuries all over the world, and most of these cases have remained unsolved.

For millennia, parents worldwide have tightly clutched their babies in the fear that something from the darkness will steal them away: madmen, spirits, faeries, demons, beasts, monsters, orin the case of our technology-obsessed, materialist societyextraterrestrials from another galaxy.

One of the earliest documented examples of paranormal child abduction comes from a nearly 1,600-year-old Turkish account following a cataclysmic earthquake. According to the historian Nicephorus, the people of Constantinople had gathered in the countryside to pray when a child was abruptly pulled into the air by some unseen force, then quickly returned to Earth. It was deemed the work of angels.

By some reports, as many as 800,000 children are reported Such speculation should not detract from the unfortunate criminal reality of these tragediesbut if a mere fraction of a percent of these disappearances results from supernatural predation, it warrants attention.

This book marks the first interdisciplinary attempt to compare paranormal child abduction from antiquity through the modern era. Predominantly, this means focusing upon Western interpretations of faerie folklore and the pernicious alien abduction phenomenon, particularly the means and motivations behind kidnapping, but multiple detours cover global traditions, Sasquatch abductions, and the recently popularized subject of disappearances in national parks. The book concludes with a look at tangentially related modern phenomena, followed by an attempt to incorporate all previous topics. Forteans are familiar with many of the topics covered; any reader well versed in one subject but less so in another is encouraged to reexamine their area of expertise, as they will likely discover connections previously unnoticed between these phenomena.