In the Middle Ages, villagers across Western Europe widely believed in the existence of changelings—creatures left in children’s beds by fairies who had stolen the human child. These changelings resembled babies but appeared sickly, with unusual and often unsettling behaviors. According to legend, to retrieve their real child, parents had to either beat the changeling until the fairies intervened or abandon it in the forest, where it would cry out in hunger and thirst. Supposedly, the fairies, unable to bear the changeling’s suffering, would take it back and return the human child. Historians largely view 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, allowing them to justify harming or abandoning the child they saw as “not human.” Credit: Strangeco A curious report appeared in the Lancaster Examiner (Pennsylvania, US) on August 25, 1875, describing an unusual incident witnessed by a large group of people. The Reading Eagle, of Wednesday, contains the following queer and quaint details of a strange affair, to which, it says, Mr. Jacob S. Peters, of Millersville, was an eyewitness, reports Strangeco. For the past eight or ten days, the cries of a child have been heard night after night, near the road leading from Morgantown to Waynesburg. A few nights since, a party crossing the mountain saw a child near the top of a large tree, in a basket. They heard it cry, and then the basket, in which the supposed child was, disappeared. There is a great mystery connected with the affair. Quite a number of persons have visited the place. An Eagle correspondent writing from Morgantown sends the following strange account of the affair, which reads like a weird story of legerdemain, or like a romance of hobgoblins or witches. The letter reads as follows: Last evening I read in the Eagle an account of a singular noise at the Ringing Rocks, near Pottstown, but we have a something on the summit of the Welsh Mountain, midway between Morgantown and Waynesburg, and about one-fourth of a mile in from the main road connecting the above places. For the past two weeks, the cries of a child could be heard by persons passing along the road, and at first nothing was thought of it, but on Sunday night last, as Robert Gorman, residing north of Downingtown, in company with another gentleman and two ladies were passing the point, the cries became heartrending, and they thought someone was treating a child shamefully. Mr. Gorman proposed to his friend to walk into the woods and ascertain the cause, the ladies to remain in the carriage. As Mr. G. thought it only a short distance to the house the child was thought to be in, the ladies concluded to go with the gentlemen, and the horses were secured to a tree, and the party started, the cries still increasing. After walking a short distance, one of the ladies, a Miss Ellie Parker, who resides near Paoli, slopped suddenly, and told the party to look up near the top of a large tree just in front of them, and there was seen a baby seated in a small basket, swinging back and forth, with but faint cries. The ladies became frightened at the sight, and begged one of the gentlemen to try and get up in the tree and bring the child down. The distance up to the first limb was some twenty feet, and the gentlemen found it impossible to get up. While the conversation was going on as to how the child could be brought down, the child gave one scream, and as if by magic, the basket fell half the distance to the ground, causing the ladies to scream, and the entire party to be more or less frightened. In less time than it takes to write this, the basket and its contents were back in its place again, the child crying all the time. This movement struck terror into the party. They watched the movements of the basket and saw the baby plainly for five minutes afterwards, and all at once, the basket with its contents disappeared. The party states that the whole affair is one of the greatest mysteries they have ever met with. Mr. Gorman says it was child’s play, but it was nevertheless a reality. The ladies state that the child was alive, for they saw it plainly move when it fell down toward them. On Monday evening a party numbering some twenty repaired to the place, and all saw the same thing. What it is is a grand mystery, as too many reliable persons saw it to be a hoax. Mr. J. S. Peters, residing south of Lancaster city, was one of the party, on Monday night, and he says he saw the baby in the basket, saw it move, and saw the falling and the disappearance. How long this will continue I am unable to say. A number from Churchtown are going over on Thursday night to witness the mystery. If the affair can be explained I will write you again. To a modern reader, this eerie event might resemble a “scripted bug” in a video game, where the same action replays in the same location at regular intervals. Later, however, a note appeared in the newspapers dismissing the incident as a “joke” devised by a “young person from the neighborhood” who allegedly had a talent for ventriloquism and could mimic a baby’s cry. Yet, how she created the illusion of a vanishing baby in a basket was never explained. 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