Faery Babies and Soul Suckers

In an effort to innovate and entertain in my next book, How to Diagnose a Changeling, I’ve been studying changeling lore. This is terrifying. I originally wrote this to explore the idea of being completely helpless to protect my children. Something I think most mothers fear. But if the villain is anything other than my own child, I’ll find a way to fight it. But what if your baby is gone. And in its place is something that looks like it and sounds like it and according to everyone else, is your baby?

You’d be completely alone, trying not to end up in an insane asylum, because you can’t save your child from within a padded cell.

This round, I’ve been focusing on traditional changeling lore and what I’ve found is awful. As with most legends, there are pieces of truth within the lore. Basically, this lore was born of the mistreatment of kids with behavioral issues, disabilities, or are left handed. Yep, left-handed kids get the short end of the stick again.

But the most disturbing part of the lore isn’t the idea that a faery is sucking the soul of you and your child or even that children are taken from their families. The real tragedy of the changeling lore is the kids who were killed by the people who were supposed to love them. I thought maybe post partem or other mental illness on the part of the parents might have been to blame but it seems this wasn’t the case. These were people who just couldn’t handle their children’s differences and tried to control them through violence which ultimately resulted in their deaths.

And of course, there’s the famous case where the LA Police Department tried to return the wrong child to a grieving mother while her son was murdered by a serial killer.

Basically, I set out to write something terrifying and ended up with the mildest possible case of changeling abduction.

The truth is way scarier. Go figure.