The Black-Eyed Child of Cannock Chase: The Sources

A small girl stands among the trees with her hands over her face. When she lowers them, her eyes are completely black. Then she is gone. That is the Black-Eyed Child of Cannock Chase as it was reported in 2014. The story is often retold as an A34 road ghost. The sources do not place her on the road at all.

What the record actually shows

The story broke in late September 2014. On 28 September the Birmingham Mail ran a piece by Mike Lockley headed “Black Eyed Child returns to haunt Cannock Chase”. The International Business Times followed the next day. Both drew on Lee Brickley, a freelance writer and paranormal researcher from the area.

The recent sighting came from a mother given the pseudonym Mrs Kelly. About two months earlier she and her daughter were walking in Birches Valley, a wooded part of the Chase, when they heard a child screaming. She turned and saw a girl no older than ten with black eyes. When she looked again the girl had gone.

Brickley added an older case. He said that in the summer of 1982 his aunt, then 18, had seen the same figure on the Chase while out in the evening with friends. That account reaches us only through Brickley. None of the reports we read named a witness or gave a precise place beyond the forest.

No report we found mentions the A34. The road runs along the western edge of the Chase between Stafford and Cannock, but the sightings are set inside the woods.

The history behind the legend

The A34 does have a dark link to Cannock Chase, and it is probably why the road crept into retellings. In the 1960s three young girls were abducted from the West Midlands and their bodies left on the Chase. Margaret Reynolds, 6, and Diana Tift, 5, were found together at Mansty Gulley on 12 January 1966, about half a mile from the A34. Christine Darby, 7, was taken from Walsall in August 1967 and found on the Chase three days later. The crimes became known as the A34 murders. Raymond Morris was convicted of Christine Darby’s murder at Stafford Assizes on 18 February 1969.

Earlier versions of this page tied the Black-Eyed Child to these murders. We found no witness or researcher in the reports we read who makes that link, and we have dropped it. It is unfair to the victims to attach a ghost story to them without cause.

The black-eyed child is also a known modern legend. It is usually traced to 1996 online posts by the Texas journalist Brian Bethel, who described meeting two black-eyed children in Abilene. See our page on black-eyed children.

How to read it

The Skeptoid blog noted in 2014 that the Cannock account is unusual for the type. Most black-eyed child stories have the children asking adults to let them in. This one reads more like a classic ghost sighting. The legend was by then well known online and in film, and that can shape what a frightened walker remembers seeing in a dark wood.

The witnesses may well have had a real and frightening experience. But the record is thin. It is one researcher’s collection, one pseudonymous mother, and a relative’s memory from three decades earlier. Treat the Black-Eyed Child of Cannock Chase as modern folklore. Our Cannock Chase page covers the area’s other reports.

Sources

• International Business Times, Black Eyed Child appears at Staffordshire beauty spot (29 September 2014) — Mrs Kelly’s account and the 1982 claim
• Skeptoid blog, Return of the Black Eyed Kids (1 October 2014) — summary of the Birmingham Mail story and a skeptical reading
• Wikipedia, Cannock Chase murders — victims, dates, the A34 name, Morris’s conviction
• Wikipedia, Black-eyed children — Brian Bethel’s 1996 posts, Birmingham Mail citation