It's storytime, children, and today, we shall be exploring the myth of the Byttingen.

The Byttingen was a creature considered to either be repulsive, or beautiful, depending on the culture in which you hear about it.

It was believed that your child had been traded for one of the Byttingen's children if your kid possessed one of many features: physical disabilities, deformities, or abnormal (according to the time) beauty.

In places such as Norway, the myth was the easiest way to tell that your child was a Byttingen offspring was to notice a massive shift in behavior, as the Byttingen used magic to make it's children look like yours, making it next to impossible with your naked human eyes to see through it. If your child had suddenly turned into a very naughty and misbehaving truant, you would have done well to get rid of it.

The last known case of potential Byttingen slaughter was in the late 1890s, when a mother drowned her child because she was certain of it being the creature.

To this day, due to the massive errors in judgement, huge room for bias, and lack of sightings, no one knows if the Byttingen be real, or, worse, still out there.

The End.