She was ten and her sister was eight. Their mum had gone to the pharmacy counter at the Ralphs near their childhood home in California, found the prescriptions weren't ready yet, and let the girls explore the store while she waited. They spent the time racing each other up and down the aisles, giggling.
Speed-walking around the end of an aisle, they nearly ran into a boy of about ten or eleven. He was tall for his age, with blond hair, plain clothes and a blank expression, and his eyes were fully black, with no white showing at all. He gave the older girl a small smile, as if her panic amused him.
The sisters froze for a couple of seconds. Behind him stood a younger blond girl, maybe seven, with short hair and her back to them. She seemed to sense something and turned around. Her eyes were the same solid black, and her face was just as still.
The older sister grabbed the younger one and ran to another aisle as fast as she could. Once they were well away, they looked at each other and burst out laughing in disbelief. Later they told their little sister and took her back to see, but the two children were gone. Neither sister remembers telling their parents.
She is now 29, and the memory came back during therapy. She points out the obvious problem herself: the two of them had just been reading about black-eyed children online, so they knew the legend. Maybe that primed them to see something that wasn't there, she says, or maybe the two kids were siblings with an unusual eye condition. But it wasn't only her. Her sister was there too, and she remembers it the same way.
