Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Cryptic Cocktail Party, a show where we
have a few drinks, share a few laughs, take a dive into the unknown.
I said laugh just then instead of laughs, but whatever.
My name is David.
Today I'm joined by a good friend of the show and host of the Cool Parents podcast.
Justin Furtak, what's going on buddy?
Not too much.
Yeah.
You look good.
Too much.
Thank you.
Yeah.
It feels like deja vu.
Yeah.
We had some technical difficulties.
It was whatever.
Dude, fucking it happens.
It's fine.
Yeah.
How you doing?
I'm all right.
I'm okay.
How are you?
I'm all right.
I got a new candle.
I'm not a candle guy, but I got a new candle.
You got to be a candle guy.
Dude, it's actually called Cerelean Aloe and it's hands down one of the best things.
I didn't realize it like de-stresses me, I guess.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Is that something candles?
I don't know fucking shit about candles.
I feel like candles to me are like crystals.
I don't think they really do anything like the properties of a candle like, oh, it's
soothing and relaxing.
I don't know.
Am I wrong for this?
No, you ever hear of aromatherapy?
Yeah, but I don't think that's anything.
That's not a thing.
Oh, it is.
Is it?
Oh, this is science.
There's a science to it.
There's no science to that.
And I refuse to believe there is.
Okay.
Well, show me some papers in the New England Journal of Medicine and then I'll.
I mean, no, like you can use smell as like a grounding technique.
You know what I mean?
It works like in more time behind that.
I don't.
Huh?
What?
Like if you're if you're ever like a panic attack, sometimes you can just smell something
and it'll help you.
There's something there.
There's something there, Dave.
I think it's psychosomatic.
I think it only works because you want it to work.
I think your mother's psychosomatic.
I'm going to play that for Marlo Prescott.
Jennifer's going to hear that.
I hope she does.
All right.
I love that woman.
I know you do.
Justin, I'm glad you're here today because I think I had as I was explaining to you before
we had a technical technical mishap.
My goal for this weekend was to write two episodes and record two episodes because I'm
going to be in New Hampshire next weekend.
And I don't think either are good, but I did choose the better of the two for you.
And fingers crossed, I think it'll go well.
I don't really know.
You know, you don't need to say that.
You can say we got a great show for you.
No, I'm not going to even if even if it's bad, I'm not going to do it to my honest.
I want to go.
I'm going to let them know upfront right away that this might be trash.
No, do it.
Do that.
Do that to your audience.
Am I sabotage?
They don't know the difference.
They don't.
Yeah, they don't know the difference.
Jim, look, you know, it's all it's all make.
It's all make anyway.
So it doesn't matter.
Oh, well, before we jump into the story, it's been studies on how dumb you're listening.
All right, Justin, just one quick question.
What is what is your opinion of children, just children in general?
I don't care for them.
Any particular reason?
Just just general just generally they're terrible.
Too much racket.
They're they're sticky.
True.
And yeah, they have no spatial awareness.
You should take it of like newborns.
I'm talking about like like like six to like preteen 16 years old.
Yeah.
Like they can at least wipe their own ass, but they're not fully independent yet.
Right.
Still applies everything you just said.
Yeah.
All right.
Sticky.
They don't like they don't like baths.
They don't like showers.
No, that's at that age.
I don't I don't like showers now.
It's like the most like annoying part of my day.
Oh, I love showers.
I'm sure you do.
I'm pretty like a good bath, too.
You look like a bath guy.
I love a guy.
I love a good bath.
I'm telling you, Dave, you said you're a candle guy now.
I'm not a candle guy now.
I have one candle.
You can't see your candle guy.
So it's a slippery slope from here.
You get one and then it's just all over.
All right.
I'm saying living living with a living with a woman changed my life.
I'm a candle guy.
I'm a bath bomb guy.
I'm a string light guy.
You're a string light guy.
Incense to incense.
Telling you women are full of good ideas.
Well, Justin, because you have such an aversion to kids, I think this is why I chose this for you.
So the topic of today's episode is what I think that you're actually you might have meant you might have talked about this on your show.
I'm not 100 percent sure.
But we're going to be going over black eyed kids.
Are you familiar?
No.
You don't know the black eyed kids?
No.
Oh, it's all bad.
None of it's good.
It's like what like what's your opinion on like children in like like Victorian ghost children in horror movies or just like creepy children in general in horror movies?
They don't scare me.
They don't.
OK.
Well, then this might be fine for you.
All right. You ready to dive into this?
Well, fucking babies made out of vapor.
I don't care.
What are you going to do?
Well, this is a little I'm cold.
Not my problem.
All right.
You know that you know what I'm talking about.
I do.
I don't think most listeners will get the reference to.
Are you afraid of the dark?
I think we get that reference from something from 1993.
Yeah.
Well, come on.
Oh, come on.
Dave, you underestimate your listeners.
There's been studies done how smart.
All right, Justin.
Well, the black eyed kids or backs, if you want to be like an absolute fucking nerd about it, are I don't actually know what they are.
Some say that they're like cryptids, ghosts, demons.
Others say they may be like aliens.
Well, some theorize that they may be like an arm of like the men in black.
But whatever they are, they're always described the same.
Aged usually between 16 to 6 to 16 years old with unusually pale skin and their eyes are a solid onyx black from eyelid to eyelid that when gazed upon fill the person encountering them with dread or in some instances seem to put the person into an almost hypnotic state.
Now, the black eyed kids are more they're more like they're more like a modern urban legend tale.
And it's often referred to as more of like a creepypasta than an actual paranormal entity.
Like, like Slender Man or Jeff the Killer, like shit like that.
I'm sure you know, just a creepypasta creepypasta, spooky spaghetti.
What's that?
You know, creepypasta is it's just like, it's like made up Internet horror stories.
They're just called creepypastas.
I refuse to believe that you've never talked about that.
We talked copypasta.
It's the same.
It's just Internet shit.
I don't know what that means, though.
We just talked about that last week.
Yeah, I don't know what I don't know why pastas in a copypasta is just like when someone says something stupid and then everyone just continuously posts in comment sections.
This is a little bit different.
These are like full fledged, like pretty much like fan fiction stories of made up characters.
Okay, my boring you just know, I'm tired.
Well, I'm sorry. We'll get through this quick.
All right. But I have to.
The reason why it's labeled as such a creepypasta is because the first ever documented sighting of the black eyed kids happened during the 90s with the rise of the Internet and still now to this day is where most reports of them can be found.
To be fair, out of like the literal thousands of quote unquote black eyed kid encounter stories.
There's like TikToks, videos, forum posts. In my opinion, there's maybe like eight that really hold any sort of weight to them. And that weight isn't very heavy. But I found a few stories that well should be taken with like the most literal grain of salt.
They're pretty fucking gnarly. So, Justin, are you ready to dive into the world of the black eyed kids?
I was born ready.
Okay, so I'm going to start us off light with the first story like in a moose bouche, if you will.
Now this story, I'm going to be honest with you.
It 100% reads like a Reddit post and is almost for sure 100% not real.
I found it on a listicle called nine terrifying encounters with black eyed children on a site that's called the lineup. So I can't imagine there's much much truth to the story. Is that like a like a like a barber forum?
It fucking might as well be dude. They had like lists about just pretty much everything you could think of. But I like the story. So I'm going to pretend like it's real because the vibes of it are good. So let's pretend like it's real. I'm gonna. So the story goes that I promised it's going to be.
I promised it's going to be a good episode and god damn it. That's going to be.
I promise the opposite.
What?
I just disagree. We're about to make magic here is what I'm getting at.
Well let's get into it then. So the story goes that late one night a man was sleeping. Oh yeah. Most of these are anonymous. They had no one has names in these because again.
Again, I don't know how true any of them are.
So the story goes that late one night, a man was sleeping on the spare bed in his infant daughter's room when he started hearing strange bumping outside his house.
He decided to just ignore it, chalked it up to the family cat just being a straight up asshole. But the thumping continued getting louder and more frequent.
The man got up to check the back porch believing it still to be the cat, but the cat was nowhere to be seen.
He then went to the kitchen and noticed two figures standing outside his front door.
The figures knocked and the man for some reason decided to open it.
He sees that there are two young boys, 11 or 12 years old, and we're giving off what he described as a pungent moldy odor.
Okay yeah.
They stood there for a bit before they looked up at the man and one of them asks, may we use your telegraph?
The man noticing right away that these kids had lid to lid black eyeballs and smelled the basement decided to pretty much just ignore the telegraph remark.
And was like, we don't have phone service here, I'm sorry, and just slammed the door in these kids' faces.
He made his way back to his daughter's room when the two boys started banging on the walls and windows of his house.
Too afraid to sleep and fighting the urge to go outside and just full on fight these children.
And almost certainly paralyzed with fear due to the fact that he was looking into the eyes of a black eyed kid.
The man held his daughter close to his chest as the pounding persisted all through the night.
The harassment only ended the moment an alarm clock went off in the house.
As soon as this happened, the knocking ended and the black eyed kids were nowhere to be seen.
And that is the first story. That's all.
I like it.
It's got to be called the cops or something.
Because again, this is made up.
Where was that too?
Who knows man? There's no details here because.
I didn't say.
Yeah, well, in the end, I also kind of I kind of juiced it up a bit.
Because the in the story, the original one, it says the moment his wife's alarm clock went off in the house.
And I was like, first of all, where was his wife during all she didn't hear any of this.
She just fucking just conked at.
She's like one of those like fucking like stay at home bombs who just pops Xanax and drinks wine all day.
She was out. She's done for the just done.
Yeah, she's like goddamn Helga Pataki's mother.
That's that was in my head.
That was exactly what I was thinking.
But yeah, I just like that because it kind of has good like it runs me like the strangers.
You remember that movie? Yeah, that kind of vibe to it.
It went nowhere. Nothing happened. It was kind of a bummer.
But for our second story, this guy doesn't have a friend with a gun.
Come down there and she'd fire it into the air, scare those kids a little bit.
But like was the kid not freaking out?
Like was the daughter just like chill with this?
She's probably becoming one.
I don't know. I wonder if that's like a side effect.
I don't know. But only if they bite you.
Oh, kind of like vampire. They do kind of play by vampire rules.
I did learn that when we'll get to that.
But for our second story, I'm going to tell you about the earliest documented encounter,
the one that we were talking about in the intro of The Black Eyed Kid, because timelines be damned.
I just wanted to tell us one second.
Now, this encounter happened in 1996 and comes to us courtesy of a man named Brian Bethel,
who was a senior staff writer for the Abilene Reporter News in Abilene, Texas.
His story goes that around 10 p.m. one night,
Bethel was going to pay his Camelot Communications Internet bill after hours.
Now, for our younger listeners, we've already made a bunch of references that you might not get.
But back in the day, you couldn't pay your bills online.
You either had to like mail it in, physically go to pay it.
Or in the case of Bethel, use the after hours mail slot.
Have you ever had to do that, Justin? I've had to do that.
Yeah.
No, I've done it.
Now, Bethel pulled over into the neighboring Westwood movie theater parking lot
so he could use the light from the marquee to write the check.
Well, he must have been like balls deep into writing this check
and just completely unaware of the happenings around him
because suddenly there was a tap on his window.
Startled a bit, Bethel glances up to see two young children
that he guessed to be nine and 13 years old, respectively,
and wearing dark colored hoodies.
He described them as having olive skin, curly hair,
and described the older child as quote unquote, suave.
The older of the two boys knocked again and asked if Bethel would give them
a ride to their mother's house so they could get some money so they could see the movie.
Now, I want you to guess what movie they were going to see in 1996.
You'll never guess what it is.
1996, not Ace Ventura when nature calls.
No, it was, I'll give you a heads a rated R movie.
Bushwhacked.
The movie they were going to see.
It came out in 96.
The movie that they were trying to go see was the final showing of the night for Mortal Kombat.
Oh, I would have got there.
Now, the black guys kids reassured him that it wouldn't take long.
We're just two kids.
And no, we don't have a gun.
Which I don't know.
They're 12 years old in Abilene, Texas.
The small they almost certainly had a gun.
There's no way they didn't.
Yeah.
Now, there's a reason these kids haven't harassed anyone yet, though, if they're in Texas.
Now, the entire time someone's going to come, someone's going to come down and discharge their weapon into the air.
Wrangle them boys.
Now, the entire times interaction, Bethel stated that he was overcome with an irrational fear.
And at one point said he even subconsciously reached out to open his door to let them in.
But like kind of like snap to.
And that's when he noticed the inky black pools that filled the children's eyes.
He described them as, quote, The sort of eyes one sees these days on aliens or bargain basement vampires on late night television.
Solace orbs like two great swaths of a starless sky.
This was just super poetic for talking about nightmare children, I feel like.
He has rolled over black.
He didn't have to go.
Dude, the entire time, the entire time I was like reading about black kids, I just kept thinking they were black like a doll's eyes.
That's exactly what I was referencing.
I know. That's all I could think the entire time was just black black like a doll's eyes.
At this point, I'm assuming Brian has sufficiently filled his pants with shit out of fear.
And the older black kid must have sensed this fear because he started just absolutely pounding on this dude's window screaming, let us in, let us in.
We can't come in unless you invite us in.
We have to come in, which is kind of fucked up and terrifying.
But it kind of broke Brian free from like his abdotic state and was like fucking like hell I do.
And slammed the car in reverse and got out of there real quick.
All the while, both the kids are still standing in the parking lot screaming at him.
You must let us in.
Brian took one last look in his rearview mirror upon exiting.
I think it was just to make sure he didn't like fucking hit one of the kids.
Yeah. But both the kids had mysteriously vanished.
Brian still doesn't know fully what actually happened that night, but he knows that it did happen and it was very real.
And as for how his story became one of the Internet's first quote unquote creepypastas, well, it's due to the fact that he has really shitty friends.
After his encounter, he emailed like a trusted few, like a small circle of friends who in turn were like, you know, fuck this dude's trust and just started spreading it all around the Internet like a bunch of dickheads, like forums, fucking message boards everywhere.
And that's how his story became like pretty big news.
Luckily for him, it didn't ruin like his career.
He still is a like reporter and shit for like the newspapers.
That's kind of cool because I feel like something like this in small town Texas would really just like fuck you like hard.
Right. What's what's his name?
Brian Bethel.
Yeah.
Yeah. I reckon Brian definitely filled his pants with the shit and the child had a insatiable hunger for shit.
That's what I've heard about these creatures is that they fill your pants or that have to have a feast on human shit.
They fucking probably do.
I have no idea.
Now, Justin, our last story.
It's a little weirder and a bit more terrifying.
And it's probably my favorite one.
Again, this is a this is an anonymous story.
Late one night, an anonymous elderly couple were fast asleep when they were abruptly awoken by three loud knocks at their front door.
The couple got up and answered it to find two young children standing there.
The children asked if they could come inside, which when it comes to black eyed kids, never let them inside.
It's like vampire rules again, because nothing good will come of it.
But the couple, well, hesitant, let them in.
The kids sat down on the couch the entire time averting eye contact.
The wife headed into the kitchen to make some cocoa while the husband stayed in the living room with the two kids.
He tried asking them some questions just to get an idea of like, who are you?
Where did you come from?
Why the fuck are you in my house this late at night?
But these questions went unanswered as the kids just sat there in silence while the entire time the family cat is cowering in the corner and hissing at these two kids.
The way is a good sign. Yeah, right.
The the wife returned from the kitchen with the cocoa for the two kids.
But as soon as she did, the kids looked up at her and in unison asked to use the bathroom.
It was then that she noticed the black voids of the children's eyes completely freaked out.
But like remaining calm, she showed them where the bathroom was and immediately returned to her husband, whose nose suddenly started streaming blood as he asked, did you see their eyes?
The wife nodded and held the tissue to her husband's nose.
Suddenly and without warning, the electricity goes out in their house and the house just goes pitch black.
The children reappear from the bathroom until the couple again in unison.
Our parents have arrived.
The kids walk out the house, leaving the front door wide open because, of course, like, what are you raising a bond?
Do you try to eat? Come on.
But that's a little rude, right?
That's what I'm saying.
Oh, she made cocoa. They didn't drink it.
They just fucking left with leaving the door open.
I didn't flush the toilet when they left the bathroom.
Why were they both in there at the same time?
They were snooping around looking for prescription drugs.
I wouldn't doubt it.
Ungrateful.
They drink all my fucking diamond tap.
I get the grape flavor because I like it.
I know it's for kids, but I like it.
I do enjoy the grape diamond tap.
It's probably the better of all of them.
But through the door, the couple could see two very tall, very pale and very slender men standing at the end of their driveway.
They watched as all four of them gotten to a black limousine style car and drove off.
But this wasn't the end to the couple's misfortune.
Over the next month or so, the family would have some strange and unfortunate incidents like lights going out in their house randomly.
They found their cat dead in a pool of its own blood.
And the husband continued to have nosebleeds that eventually turned out to be a rare form of cancer.
So, yeah, whether those things were caused by the black eyed kids, I don't know.
But who's to say?
Oh, yeah.
But they were.
But yeah, there you have it.
These are just a few of the stories of the many stories of the black eyed kids, what they are, who fuck knows.
Is any of this real?
You asking me?
Yeah, it's just open question.
Anyone can answer.
I believe it.
I believe it all.
I don't buy that.
But yeah.
So what did you think?
What are your theories?
What do you think?
Do you think they're aliens, ghosts, vampires?
I got some black eyed kids in my neighborhood.
Yeah, but that's probably just domestic abuse.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
No, they're always visiting my house.
I said, they say, can I come in?
I said, no, no, you don't belong.
Get out of here.
You don't belong.
Shit.
But yeah, but that's that's the story.
I hope it was good.
I hope you enjoyed them.
It was pretty good.
It was fun.
Yeah.
So I mean, the last thing, I mean, they got a couple of slender daddies.
Well, that's where the theory that they might be men in black proxy people come from, because like they do a lot of weird shit like that.
Like they like the men in black are known for like saying weird shit like in those kids asking, can we use your telegraph?
Like, that's kind of weird having men in black come in.
Like the other thing, too, is that they that some people say that the men that the black eyed kids skin might not be their skin.
Like they're like they're wearing like a skin suit and they put makeup on over the skin suit to look more human.
The men in black are known to do that, too.
And yeah, it's just all it's all weird.
It's all nonsense.
If you ask me, I don't I don't buy the black eyed kids.
But maybe just because I've only seen like most of my exposure to the black eyed kids has been like those shitty tech talk videos with black eyed kid comes to my house and it's just someone wearing West Borland's like contact lenses.
You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Which is the reason why the first one like the the very first one from the 1996 seems credible is because in 1996 you couldn't just get all black contact lenses, especially if you were a 12 year old in Abilene Tech.
Like there was no hot topic that you couldn't just go get that kind of stuff nowadays.
They don't sell that kind of they don't sell that kind of stuff on topic either.
Well, no, we do that. But you know what I mean, though, like could maybe I don't know.
It is what it is. All right, Justin.
I look the 1996 ones legit. I'm
I fuck with that one. I do. I do. Like that one seems more credible, but also at the same time.
He is a he is an he's a writer like he knows how to spin a yarn, if you will.
So who knows? But I do like the fact that his friends suck and he sent an email.
Like to me, that's fucking hilarious because like that's what our friends would do. I feel like if I emailed you a story about a bonkers nightmare demon child's you'd be like, do a fuck this.
Everyone has to read this. No, no, I wouldn't put it on. I wouldn't put it on the forums unless I ask you first.
No, but you forwarded someone else, though, I feel like. I don't think so.
Well, that's well, there you go. I appreciate that. You're good.
I probably read it to Curtis or something, but I don't think I don't think I forwarded or anything like that.
Yeah. Well, I appreciate that. All right, Justin.
Is there anything you want to say? If you told me not to, I'd say, OK, yeah, I won't.
Well, maybe that's what maybe he didn't put in the email like, hey, don't share this with anyone.
They just thought that it was fair game because I mean, you already emailed it to me and like four other people.
Why wouldn't anyone else? You know what I mean? Look, if I had if I had a dollar for every time some kid with black eyes slammed on my window, said, let them in.
I wouldn't have much money at all, Dave. I wouldn't have much money at all.
It's never happened to me. Yeah, because it doesn't happen to anyone ever. It's not.
But anyways, if it's going to happen, it's probably going to happen to me. You think so?
You think you that's if it happens to any. I mean, you've already you've already been you've already been scouted by aliens once in your life.
So, oh, yeah, many times.
All right, Justin, is there anything you want to promote before we sign and sign off this bitch? No.
So Justin co-hosts a podcast with one of our good friends, Curtis Charles, called The Cool Parents Podcast.
It's pretty good. It's funny. I've been talking in pretty good.
I've been I've been talking in the foot fiend voice a lot lately just because that one tweet I saw recently.
And Pumsi kissing.
Yeah, we got that. We got the podcast. We got the band. Same name. Cool Parents.
Oh, yeah, I forgot there was a band part of that. Yeah, there's a band. Cool Parents. They're really good.
It's better than the podcast. I got another I got another band, but there's nothing out yet.
It doesn't matter. It's good. It's got people in it that are good people.
That's all right. So, yeah, find the cool parents on Instagram, cool parents worldwide.
You can find it on Spotify, Apple School Parents, parentheses, not a parenting podcast.
You can find the band on Spotify as well. Everywhere else has cool parents.
And yeah, if you want to follow us on Instagram, it's Crypto Cocktail.
Follow us on TikTok. It's Crypto Cocktail Party. We have a Patreon. It's five dollars a month.
That's it. It's pretty cool. We also have a Discord server.
I don't fucking know what to do with it, but please join and start talking to me because it's very lonely in there.
With that, Justin, do you want to say bye to everyone? Nope.
You