child-stealing

Lamashtu · salience 0.9

“She is believed to sneak into homes at night, stealing or harming babies, and causing miscarriages.”

Lilitu · salience 0.9

“She is believed to steal or harm infants, causing unexplained illnesses or sudden deaths.”

Al · salience 0.7

“It is said to enter the room or shelter where a woman is giving birth, to attack mother or newborn, and in the more elaborate tellings to steal or consume an internal organ — most often the liver or lungs — as the mechanism behind stillbirth or fatal childbed fever.”

Cù Sìth · salience 0.5

“lest the Cù Sìth carry them off to a fairy mound (a sìthean) to supply milk for the children of the fairies (the daoine sìth).”

Kalanoro

“In some stories it is a dangerous, child-stealing spirit that lures or abducts unattended children who wander too far into the forest, and parents in some communities invoke the Kalanoro as a cautionary figure to keep children close to home.”

Slender Man

“Slender Man's defining power is his association with children, whom he is said to stalk, follow, and in some tellings abduct, often over an extended period of surveillance before any direct encounter.”

Asin

“Some tellings describe the Asin as possessing a magical means of luring children specifically, enchanting huckleberry bushes so that any child who eats the fruit falls under her power and wanders off into the forest to be taken.”

Tylwyth Teg

“The most consistently documented behavior is the abduction of human children, usually via a substituted changeling left in the stolen child's place.”

Cihuateteo

“The tradition is emphatic that the Cihuateteo were no benevolent mothers: descending to earth on the days sacred to them, they haunted crossroads at night, struck children with seizures and madness, stole them outright, and seduced men into adultery and other transgressions.”