In the Middle Ages, inhabitants of villages throughout Western Europe widely believed in the existence of changelings – creatures left in children's beds by fairies who stole a human child. These changelings resembled children, but appeared sickly, and their behavior was unusual and often disturbing.
According to legend, to get their real child back, parents had to either beat the usurper until the fairies intervened, or abandon the child in the forest, where it screamed from hunger and thirst. Supposedly, the fairies, unable to bear the suffering of the changeling, will take him back and return the human child.
Historians largely view these beliefs as superstitions that arose when people encountered children with congenital deformities. Many people found it easier to imagine that their robust child had been kidnapped by fairies, allowing them to justify harming or abandoning a child they considered “not human.”
Interesting report appeared In Lancaster Examiner (Pennsylvania, USA) of August 25, 1875, describing an unusual event witnessed by a vast group of people.
From Wednesday's Reading Eagle the following strange and peculiar details of a strange case are reported to have been eyewitnessed by Mr. Jacob S. Peters of Millersville – reports singularity.
For eight or ten days, night after night, a baby has been heard crying near the road leading from Morgantown to Waynesburg. A few nights later, a group passing through the mountain saw a baby in a basket at the top of a vast tree.
They heard him crying, and then the basket containing the alleged child disappeared. There is a great mystery associated with this case. The place was visited by many people.
An Eagle correspondent writing from Morgantown sends the following strange account of the case, which reads like a strange story about a legerdemain, or like a romance between hobgoblins or witches.
The letter reads as follows: I read in the Eagle last evening an account of a peculiar noise at the Ringing Rocks, near Pottstown, but we have something on the top of a Welsh mountain, halfway between Morgantown and Waynesburg, and about one… one-fourth of a mile from the main road connecting the above places.
For the last two weeks, the baby's cries could be heard by people passing by on the street, and at first no one thought anything of it, but last Sunday evening, when Robert Gorman, who lives north of Downingtown, accompanied by another gentleman and two ladies, the the screams became heartbreaking and they thought that someone had treated the child shamefully.
Mr. Gorman suggested to his friend that he go into the woods and find out the cause, and the ladies remained in the carriage. Since Mr. G. thought that it was only a miniature distance to the house where the child supposedly was, the ladies decided to go with the gentlemen, and the horses were tied to a tree and the fun began, with the screams still increasing.
After walking a miniature distance, one of the ladies, Miss Ellie Parker, who lived near Paola, suddenly tripped and told the group to look up near the top of a vast tree just in front of them. A child was seen there. sitting in a compact basket, rocking back and forth, making only pale cries.
The ladies were terrified by this sight and begged one of the men to try to climb the tree and bring the child down to the ground. The distance to the first branch was about twenty feet and the men couldn't get up.
While the conversation was going on about how to get the baby down, the baby let out one scream and as if by magic the basket fell halfway down to the ground, causing the ladies to scream and the entire group to shriek. more or less scared.
In less time than it took to write this, the basket and its contents were back in their place, and the baby was still crying. This movement caused terror in the party.
They watched the basket move and saw the baby clearly for five minutes, after which the basket and its contents disappeared. The party says the entire case is one of the biggest mysteries it has ever encountered.
Mr. Gorman says it was child's play, but it was reality nonetheless. The ladies claim that the baby was alive because they clearly saw it moving when it fell on it. On Monday evening, a group of about twenty people arrived at the scene and everyone saw the same thing. What it is remains a large mystery because too many credible people have dismissed it as a hoax.
Mr. J. S. Peters, living south of Lancaster, was one of the party on Monday evening, and states that he saw the child in the basket, saw it move, and saw it fall and disappear. How long this will last, I cannot say.
Many Churchtown residents will be joining us on Thursday evening to witness this mystery. If the matter can be clarified, I will write to you again.
Later, however, a newspaper report appeared in which the event was considered a “prank” invented by “the young lady next door” who allegedly had a talent for ventriloquism and could imitate the crying of a baby. However, it was never explained how she created the illusion of a child disappearing into a basket.
To a contemporary reader, this amazing event may resemble a “scripted bug” in a video game in which the same action is repeated in the same place at regular intervals. However, since there are no more details about this story, it remains a historical mystery as to what people actually saw at the time.
Image Source: Pixabay.com
