In the Middle Ages, villagers throughout Western Europe widely believed in the existence of changelings: creatures left in children’s beds by fairies who stole the human child. These changelings resembled babies, but appeared sickly, with unusual and often disturbing behavior.
According to legend, to retrieve their real child, the parents had to beat the changeling until the fairies intervened, or abandon it in the forest, where it cried out from hunger and thirst. Presumably the fairies, unable to bear the changeling’s suffering, would take it back and return the human child.
Historians largely regard these beliefs as superstitions that arose when people encountered children with congenital deformities. Many found it easier to imagine that their healthy child had been taken by fairies, thus justifying the child they perceived as ‘not human’.
A curious report appeared in the Lancaster Examiner (Pennsylvania, USA) on August 25, 1875, describing an unusual incident witnessed by a large group of people.
Wednesday’s Reading Eagle contains the following strange and curious details of a strange case, of which Mr. Jacob S. Peters, of Millersville, was an eyewitness, reports Strangeco.
Night after night for the past eight or ten days, the cries of a child have been heard near the road leading from Morgantown to Waynesburg. A few nights later a party crossing the mountain saw a child at the top of a large tree, in a basket.
They heard the crying, and then the basket containing the so-called child disappeared. There is a great mystery surrounding the affair. Quite a number of people have visited the place.
An Eagle correspondent writing from Morgantown sends the following strange account of the affair, which reads like a strange tale oflegerdemain, or like a romance about goblins or witches.
The letter reads as follows: Last night I read in the Eagle an account of a peculiar noise at the Ringing Rocks, near Pottstown, but we have something on the top of Welsh Mountain, halfway between Morgantown and Waynesburg, and about one… Twenty-four kilometers away from the main road that connects the above-mentioned places.
For the past fortnight the cries of a child had been heard by passers-by along the road, and at first nothing was thought of, but last Sunday evening, when Robert Gorman, living north of Downingtown, in company with another gentleman and two ladies, came over, the screams became heartbreaking and they thought someone was treating a child shamefully.
Mr. Gorman suggested to his friend that he should walk into the woods and find out the cause, and let the ladies sit in the carriage. As Mr. still increasing.
After walking a short distance, one of the ladies, Mrs. Ellie Parker, who lives near Paoli, suddenly lay down sloppily and told the party to look up at the top of a large tree just ahead of them, and a baby was seen. sitting in a basket, swaying back and forth, making only faint cries.
The ladies became frightened at the sight and begged one of the gentlemen to try to climb the tree and bring down the child. The distance to the first branch was about twenty feet, and the gentlemen found it impossible to get up.
While the conversation was going on about how to get the child down, the child let out a scream, and as if by magic the basket fell halfway to the ground, causing the ladies to scream and the whole party to panic. more or less scared.
In less time than it took to write this, the basket and its contents were back in place, the child crying all the while. This move created terror in the party.
They watched the movements of the basket and saw the baby clearly for five minutes, and suddenly the basket with its contents disappeared. The party states that the entire case is one of the greatest mysteries they have ever encountered.
Mr. Gorman says it was child’s play, but it was a reality nonetheless. The ladies claim that the child was still alive, as they clearly saw it moving as it fell towards them. On Monday evening, a group of about twenty people came to the place, and they all saw the same thing. What it is is a big mystery because too many trustworthy people saw it as a hoax.
Mr. J. S. Peters, who lives south of the city of Lancaster, was one of the party on Monday evening, and he says he saw the baby in the basket, saw it move, and saw its fall and disappearance. I can’t say how long this will last.
A number from Churchtown are going along on Thursday evening to witness the mystery. If the matter can be explained, I will write to you again.
However, a note later appeared in the newspapers dismissing the incident as a “joke” devised by a “neighborhood young lady” who reportedly had a talent for ventriloquism and could imitate a baby’s cry. Yet it was never explained how she created the illusion of a disappearing baby in a basket.
To a modern reader, this eerie occurrence may seem like a “scripted bug” in a video game, where the same action is repeated at regular intervals in the same location. But since there are no more details about this story, what people actually saw at the time remains a historical mystery.
