Never go into the woods alone if you are a child. For in the woods lives the Alderman. He is a strange creature, no one knows if he is alive or dead, heavenly or hellish, real or just a figment of your imagination.
What everyone know, however, is what he does when he takes a liking to you. He will not leave you alone, he will follow you home, he will make you sick, he will take you into his arms and leave with your soul in hand.
I was just a little girl, when he took Fourman Rouse, he was our neighbour back home. One day he wanted to help his father cut the lumber in the woods. He set out into the forest, they had traversed the way quite a few times already, though he had never walked it alone. He was confident, the little man he already was.
I do not know if he got lost or never strayed from the beaten path, it does not matter to the Alderman. For he is interested only in all the children without their parents, families or even friends. I never knew what the Alderman said to Fourman, he was gone before he could ever tell me. Others, that have survived for longer, they told of all the riches, all the fun, all the company that the Alderman promised them if they would join him. Even fewer have had the chance to tell of all the things the Alderman threatened to do if they would not join him, before he ripped their souls out of the body and make them part of his own.
It was a dark and windy night, when he woke us up by hammering on our door, you see, our house was closest to the forest and he thought he might be safe within the light of our candles, but it was too late. I remember the tall woodcutter, he was hugging his boy, as if he could stop his soul from leaving that day. Tears streaming down the man's face, I had never even seen him flinch before.
Later I saw his horse, he had whipped it so hard in his desperation, that it barely had fur on its backside anymore. But it did not help, the Alderman had his claws in little Fourman already, he would never let him go again.
I still shudder when I think of the look on his face. It was pure bliss, the kind you only see when a drunkard passes away with a tankard in his hands. Our priest said, that there was nothing that could be done when the Alderman had claimed a soul. She knew that nothing would ever return the soul to the body.
We held a funeral for little Fourman. The priest had put his body in a pyre in the centre of the village. She had blessed the little one with all she knew, hoping that it would help to guide his soul to a good place, away from the Alderman. His mother kissed him goodbye one last time and then his crying father put the pillow on the still breathing body...

Fae

No one really understands the motives and origins of the fae. No one can fathom their strange magic and the reasons for the actions that seem completely irrational to us.
People say the Alderman is a fae lord, collecting souls for his court, as it is well known that fae cannot have children of their own, so they entice them away from their real families, never letting them come back to their families.

Demon

We all know that these evil creatures will do everything to acquire the souls of mortals. So why wouldn't they prey on the most vulnerable and defenceless of us? It is a well understood concept that no one would be immune to their enticements.

Ghost

I have often found the claim that the Alderman is the spectral remainder of a child that was killed in the woods. A murder with a culprit that was never charged. The people say that the Alderman will take the lives he should have had in return.

Not Real

Lastly, one has to consider the option, that the Alderman is not real. The infrequent attacks, the vast differences in reaction to the Alderman as well as the large area the attacks seem to cover, suggest that it is not a single being that is the cause of these happenings.
It is very well a possibility that it is a host of different creatures that have been lumped together after the unknowing village folk could not find a proper explanation.