Abductions of Children by What?

From Our Haunted Planet, by John Keel, pp. 202-208:

"Children vanish more frequently than any other group. We're not talking about ordinary runaways. In August, 1869, thirteen children vanished in Cork, Ireland. No sign of kidnapping or foul play. The same month there was a wave of disappearing children in Brussels, Belgium. Another group of youngsters melted away in Belfast in August, 1895. And again in August, 1920, eight girls (all under twelve years of age) disappeared forever in Belfast...

"Actually, children have been disappearing in large numbers for centuries all over the world, and most of these cases have remained unsolved. In the Middle Ages it was popularly believed that fairies and leprechauns frequently stole children away. The Indians of North and South America also have many myths and stories about children being kidnapped by little people. The notion that parahumans kidnap children is deeply entrenched in every culture...

"The celebrated Pied Piper of Hameln, Germany, is more than just a charming children's story. A stranger actually did appear in Hameln in the Middle Ages, and he lured away 150 children never to be seen again. The event is still commemorated with an annual festival in Hameln (one of the old accounts says that the children were taken to a subterranean cavern - Branton).

"In A.D. 1212 a teenage boy in France, Stephen of Cloyes, BEGAN TO HEAR VOICES which inspired him to collect together fifty thousand children for the pathetic Children's Crusade. They marched off to do battle with the infidels and disappeared EN MASSE. The popular explanation is that they were all seized by slavers."

[Just a thought: Might the fairy rings of old, and the crop circles of today, be one and the same? -- Webmaster, 20kWeb]