The Dead Children's Playground - Alabama

 

This eerie playground adjacent to Maple Hill, Huntsville's oldest cemetery, doesn't just have an eerie nickname for fun. The playground was presumably designed to entertain kids while their parents visited the graves of loved ones. Legend has it, though, that the spirits of children, who've been buried in the cemetery since the first grave was dug there in 1822 come out to play at night. The living have observed orbs of light going down the slide, seen swings moving on their own, and even heard giggling. Creepier still, some say the spirits include victims of a rash of child murders that happened in the '60s, when bodies were rumored to have been found in the area that now houses the playground.

Furthermore, according to another legend, many children who died in Huntsville during the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic are buried in Maple Hill plots adjoining the playground. The spirits of those children, some say, come out after dark to run and play, as they might have in life. An online search turns up photos of unexplained shadows and orbs.  Dead Children's Playground receives several visitors each year including paranormal investigators. There have been several reports of strange events that have taken place at the playground, including swings moving on their own and the laughter of children. Although there is no official count of the number of children who died in Huntsville during the pandemic, or how many were buried in Maple Hill, the number must have been in the hundreds. 

Covering approximately 100 acres, and including more than 80,000 gravesites, Maple Hill Cemetery is also Huntsville's largest cemetery. Whether you believe it's haunted or not, Dead Children's Playground is most certainly Alabama's creepiest urban legend.

The black-eyed children legend

 

The black-eyed children or black-eyed kids is the legend of paranormal creatures that resemble children between the ages of six and sixteen. These creatures with pale skin and black eyes have reportedly been seen hitchhiking, panhandling, or at the doorsteps of residential homes. A bunch of stories have been circulating, all following a very similar pattern. Kids with eyes completely blacked out appear at people's home or vehicle, knock on the door, and then insist upon getting inside. Anyone who encountered them has almost immediately felt an overwhelming sense of dread. 

While tabloid coverage of these creatures has claimed that tales of black-eyed children have existed since the 1980s, most sources indicate that the legend originated from 1996 postings written by Texas reporter Brian Bethel on a "ghost-related mailing list," relating two alleged encounters with "black-eyed kids." Bethel describes encountering two such children in Abilene, Texas in 1996 and claims that a second person had a similar, unrelated encounter in Portland, Oregon. Bethel's stories have become regarded as classic examples of creepypasta, and gained such popularity that he published a FAQ "just to keep up with demand for more info about the new urban legend." In 2012, Brian Bethel told his story on reality TV series Monsters and Mysteries in America. He wrote a follow-up article for the Abilene Reporter News, describing his experience and maintaining his belief that it was legitimate.

This legend even crossed bodies of water and landed in the great land of the UK where in 2014, the Daily Star wrote three front-page stories about sightings of the black-eyed children in the haunted pub in Staffordshire. Ghost hunters who believed that the black-eyed children were extra-terrestrials, vampires or ghosts took these alleged sightings very seriously.

Nowadays, people still claim to see the black-eyed children when driving late at night down an empty road, or outside of their window late at night, or even lurking in the shadows of their room. Many people have reported seeing the black-eyed children standing in the corner of their room during their episodes of sleep paralysis or even waking up in the middle of the night because they sensed someone was watching them and in the shadows were these children.

A podcast talk about the black-eyed kids