Kids can be so innocent, so adorable, so silly—so why can they also be so darn creepy? These people have shared the most messed up things that have come out of their kids' mouths, and they're so dark, we'll be sleeping with the lights on tonight, thank you very much.
1. The Shadow Man Cometh
When my daughter was three, she had a disturbing imaginary friend. She called him “shadow man” and he mostly would stay in the corner of the room. Sometimes he would walk around and her little eyes followed the entire time. At first she would just casually mention him and she didn't seem bothered by him, but as time went on she would express how mean he was becoming.
One night, being desperate to fix this situation for her, I was going to beat the heck out of shadow man. So I go into the corner swinging and my daughter gets more upset and says shadow man is laughing and now showing his sharp teeth. She was terrified. I was terrified.
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2. Private Eyes
I was vacationing at a big cabin in the mountains for a week for a family reunion when I heard the most bloodcurdling scream. It was horrible. I've never heard a sound quite like it since. It sounded like an animal caught in a trap...but it was human. It was my two-year-old niece. I raced out into the hallway to see my niece running towards me, face contorted in horror.
She leaped into my arms and screamed: “Run. Baby. Eyes. EYES. RUN!” She was shaking like a leaf, but clawing my neck and clothes trying to get me to run. At one point she pointed down the empty hallway, still screaming about eyes. There were no windows, just a locked door. A blank hallway. By then the rest of the family had come crowding around to see what was going on.
I couldn't explain it and neither could she. Just “Baby. Eyes. Baby,” and then she'd meltdown all over again. This happened two more times during our stay. Eventually, the family came up with their own explanation, that she must have seen one of her cousins sleeping upstairs and gotten scared by the blanket moving.
They treat it like a joke now. I was the only real witness all three times though...and I can tell you that that is NOT what freaked her out. I'm not sure what it was, but it wasn't another child.
3. Don’t Lose Your Marbles
I freaked my mother and grandmother out when I was about 3. I'd randomly stopped playing with whatever I was playing with (dolls or something) and walked up to them and said "I don't like marbles," and when asked why I'd said "they hurt" and rubbed the side of my head. Mum kissed it, asked if it was better now, and I went back to playing.
It stumped them because when my mother was 10 and her brother was 8, they'd gotten into a fight over a bag of marbles and she'd smacked him around with the bag and he had a big bruise. My uncle (her brother) passed when I was a few months old, and we had no marbles in the house, at least none that my sister and I were allowed to play with—my sister was about 6 months old, though our brother is around 10 years older than us—choking hazards, etc. It was a creepy, creepy thing to happen.
4. Addressing The Issue
My son was 3 and had a fever. He woke up from a nap and said to me, "You are prettier than my other mom." I asked him who his other mom was. He said, "Gloria" and gave her last name. We had just moved from Brooklyn to Long Island. I was fairly shocked and asked what he meant. So, he told me that he was riding his bike.
He fell, hit his head, and woke up with me as his mother. I was stunned, so I questioned him further and asked where he lived, and he said, "Right near where we lived in Brooklyn, by the train." I had the current phone book, so I looked up that name, and sure enough, that last name was a block over from where we lived.
I asked him what his father's name was, and he said, "Everyone calls him Groover, but his name is Mike." When I heard this, I almost hit the floor. The first name on the phone record was Mike. I asked how old he was when he fell off his bike, and he told me 12 years old. Then he repeated, "Yes, you are prettier than my other mom."
We talked more, and I gave him some medicine and put him back to bed. When he woke up next, he remembered none of what he said. He looked at me like I was insane. It was a moment that is forever burned in my memory because of how correct his information was. It validated it for me.
5. Imagined Tragedy
I went to pick up my son at daycare and the support staff seemed to be very concerned about something. They hemmed and hawed a little, then told me they went swimming that day.
They said they hoped it wasn't distressing for my five-year-old son, but they thought I should know they went swimming. I was confused. I asked them to explain themselves.
They said that when they were telling the kids about pool safety, he volunteered that his little sister had drowned in a pool because somebody jumped in without looking. He was apparently quite convincing.
I had to explain to them that he's never had a sister or any sibling at all. They were flabbergasted. When I asked him why he told this story, he just shrugged. There was no real reason.
I think he was maybe trying to lend more importance to the topic of pool safety with his story. Sometimes you never learn why your kid does something.
6. Head In The Clouds
When he was 3, my husband decided to treat our son to a flight over our city in a Cessna. When it was time to get on the plane, our boy climbed into the pilot’s seat and was very upset when he was told he had to move. He began crying and saying he was sorry; he didn’t mean to crash last time and he’d be good this time.
My husband managed to calm him by pointing out that his legs were too short for his feet to reach the pedals. Once he got settled in the back seat, he started fussing about not being able to use the radio, so the pilot gave him a headset but didn’t plug it in all the way. Our son then started trying to raise the tower.
He was doing his radio check to try and get clearance. At that point, the pilot needed to take a break, so he stepped out. My husband took the time to talk to our son. What he said made my husband's blood run cold. He told him that he crashed the last plane he flew and no one survived. When the pilot got back, they were able to do the flight with no further issues.
We went to an aeronautics museum about a year later where an old Mosquito was being restored. Our son told the curator that he used to fly one of those, so he offered us a tour of the plane. When we got in, our son started pointing out several things that were “wrong” with the plane, which all turned out to be correct.
The curator told us the plane had been modernized and was now being restored to its original condition. He also confirmed that the items he had pointed out were in fact going to be replaced. Our kid is grown now and has no interest in planes or flying and doesn’t remember being a thing except just knowing about planes.
7. Keep It Moving
My mom tells this story all the time. Apparently, when I was three months old, my parents took me on a road trip to France. They were supposed to drive all night, but my dad nearly fell asleep at the wheel, so they decided to stop and sleep somewhere. Luckily we had an RV, so all they needed to do was find a campsite.
After 30 minutes of looking, they were unable to find a campsite nearby, so they decided that a church parking lot would do. At 3 am they drove onto the lot, and as soon as they did, I started screaming at the top of my lungs, and up until then, I had been sleeping soundly. They tried everything for an hour, clean diaper, food, walking, rocking.
Nothing worked. So, knowing they wouldn't get any sleep, decided to continue the journey. As soon as they left the parking lot, I stopped. Like turning of a light switch. It still creeps them out to this day.
8. Warming Up
I was about 4 and spending the night at my grandparents’ house. They were staying up to watch the Olympics, which meant that I got to sleep in their bed. I was trying to fall asleep, and the light from the TV was relaxing me. Suddenly, I felt so cold. I wasn’t scared, but shivers ran down my spine. Then I saw a new light.
Scared, I slowly turned. When I looked, I nearly started screaming. At the side of the bed was an older woman who was translucent with a blue tint. I wasn’t afraid of her but of her presence. She sat in the rocking chair holding a dog looking right at me. I immediately went under the sheets and turned to the other side of the bed with my eyes slammed shut.
I opened my eyes after what felt like an eternity. This time, I saw a warm orange light that replaced the blue. I took a peek and saw men on fire. They just stood there burning. I tried turning, but the woman was still there. This time she was standing. Her mouth didn’t move, but I heard a voice telling me it was okay.
I remember nothing else. The next morning, I didn’t get out of bed until my parents came to get me. They noticed that I was freaked out, and after a lot of coaxing, I told them about my nightmare. They chalked it up to a child’s imagination. But then they told my grandfather, a cold and stoic man...who almost passed out.
He was crying and nonverbal. But after he calmed down enough, he said that when he came back from Vietnam, he’d lie in bed and suffer from panic attacks. His mother stood over him to calm him as he relived his days as a soldier manning a flamethrower. While he slept, she sat in the rocking chair to made sure he rested.
9. Blue Lady’s Hands
When my daughter was about three or four, she started talking about "the blue lady". My wife and I asked her who she was. Her reply creeped me the heck out. We were told: "I don't know, but she wants her hands back".
This gave us chills like you would not believe. This went on for a few weeks. The story never changed and it was always the blue lady needs her hands.
We were seconds away from getting a priest or a witch in to bless the house. One morning, I'm watching television, and there is a woman in a blue US Post Office uniform saying "thanks to this hand cream, I got my hands back!" My daughter comes running into the room screaming: "That's the blue lady! I love her!"
10. Past Life
When my nephew was about three years old, I was showing him a Sonic the Hedgehog game. He suddenly said to me: "I've played that before, with my old Grandad". This was weird for two reasons. I knew he hadn’t played the game before, and because he had no “old Grandad”.
His mom took me aside and explained that he regularly talks about his "old life", and she'd pieced this much together from him. My nephew believes that he died when he was 13 years old and that his previous family was very sad.
This family had lots of brothers and sisters, and they all lived in a flat with his old mommy and daddy who were very nice, but didn't have many teeth. He believes that he picked my brother and sister-in-law to be his new mommy and daddy.
He was very consistent and very persistent that his old mommy and daddy were good people. It was pretty weird. I’m not sure if he still talks about them now he's started school.
11. Only Near Cemeteries
When my daughter was young, we’d be riding in the car and she’d randomly say: “My sisters are here!” Then she’d animatedly whisper to the empty seat beside her.
She was very lighthearted about the whole thing. She spoke of "Ira" and other sisters whose names she didn’t know. She was always happy to see them. Being an only child, imaginary friends weren’t a concern to me. There was something else that was more worrisome. She only mentioned them when we were near cemeteries.
It was one of those creepy things you’d try to explain away. She’d say it, and I’d look around, relieved to see no headstones in sight, only to find a small family plot buried in the brush along the roadside a few moments later.
Once it happened on vacation. She said it at the base of a hill. As we crested the hill, there was a cemetery on the other side. I have no clue why, and she never mentioned the cemeteries or ever acknowledged them.
It happened frequently, and I would just shrug it off. Eventually, when she got older, it stopped. She’s a teen now and says when she thinks of it, it’s like a dark room full of different girls with the light only shining on the girl she knew as Ira in the forefront.
I googled the girl name Ira. It means “watchful” in Hebrew.
12. Billy Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
I had a friend who lived in a very old house—I think built in the 1750s—who had an imaginary friend named Billy for a few weeks when she was little. She would play dolls and pretend in her room with him, and her parents didn’t think anything of it.
One day, they noticed she was being pretty quiet, so they went to her room and checked in on her. The sight scared them deeply. She was just sitting on the ground staring at a blank part of the wall. There were no pictures or anything to look at.
They asked her what she was doing, and she said: “playing with Billy”. Okay, yes they thought this was a bit odd, but then just decided that kids were weird, and it was probably fine. After that day, though, she never played with Billy again...
A few years later, her parents had to cut the drywall in her room for some reason. They found something very eerie. The workers found the name “Billy” scratched into the beam inside the wall.
Of course her parents were surprised and looked into it further. Apparently there was a little boy named Billy who passed on the property sometime in the late 1800s. My friend has no memory of playing with Billy. Her mom told us this story when we were older.
13. Here “Him” Comes
My cousin has a thing where his eyes don't adjust in the light or dark, so he was able to see clearly in the dark when all we saw was pitch black. We're out camping as we do in the summertime and sitting around a fire.
The fire was making it worse so we couldn't see very far at all. We were basically surrounded by darkness. Out of nowhere my cousin says—in quite a creepy voice—"Here him comes".
We all started freaking out, asking who? He just kept saying "Here him comes". Out of nowhere a fox emerged from the dark and just walked up to a crowd of people and a fire. Weird thing for a fox to do.
14. Grandma Did It
When my daughter was learning her ABCs, one morning at breakfast she sang all the way through for the first time. We congratulated her and asked if she'd been practicing at day care.
She told us no, but that “mommy's mommy taught me when I was in bed". Mommy's mommy would be her grandmother...who we’d buried three years earlier.
15. Where’s My Sister?
One day when my son was about three, he started asking all kinds of interesting questions about his younger sister. He was then providing details about the way she dresses and her personality.
I kept trying to ask if he meant his cousins or a friend from school, or maybe a character on his favorite TV show, but this only made him more upset. By the time my wife came into the room, he was nearly stamping his feet asking these questions I couldn't answer.
After my wife tried to calm him down and assure him that there was no little sister, he got even more upset and screamed, "Then why does she look just like you?" This caused my wife to run out of the room crying and slam the door to the bedroom behind her. Because there was something he could never know.
Just over a year earlier, my wife had a miscarriage at about nine weeks in. It was an emotional event she still hasn't completely recovered from to this day. I still have no idea to whom my son was referring.
The good news is that this sort of talk ended that day and was never spoken of again. He now has a real little sister. It was a spine tinglingly creepy conversation I'll never forget.
16. He Understood Perfectly
I grew up in a very large family, and once all my siblings and I went to a park that had a little pond the kids could swim in. I was sitting on the shore with some of my siblings, and we all noticed that our youngest brother was flailing around with his head under the water.
The oldest of us was just standing there pointing and laughing at him. We all, of course, jumped up and grabbed the struggling kid up. He coughed up a bit of water and was shaken up but was otherwise fine.
We asked the oldest if he understood what could have happened to his sibling if he stayed under water too long. His response still sends chills up my spine. “Yeah, he would have drowned”. None of us knew how to respond to that.
17. I Saw You In The Window
My daughter, who was four at the time, was playing in the backyard one day and I quickly went inside to do something in the kitchen on our first floor. I did not go upstairs to the bedrooms at all.
After a minute or so I came back out. She said "mommy why were you in my room? I saw you look out the window at me!" This freaked me out considerably because we were definitely the only people home at the time.
I told her that I didn't go upstairs. She got upset and insisted she saw me look out her window from the upper floor. With great hesitation, I went upstairs to look around. I was beyond scared, but nobody was in my house—ghost or otherwise.
18. Let It Go
When my kid was about three years old, he woke me up in the middle of the night. My son was standing in the dark with a black blanket draped over his head looking a little like a tiny Sith Lord. To make matters worse, he was whispering the words to the song from Frozen.
“Let it go” he whispered, “let it go". I can't tell you how creepy that was and how long it took me to fall back asleep.
19. She Feeds Them Brains
My youngest daughter was about four, and we were sitting on the couch watching PBSkids. She reached over and paused the TV. Then she looked at me and affectionately said, "Mommy, when you turn into a zombie, I will have to lock you in a room and keep you there. I promise to feed you brains every day but you can't have my brains".
I was shocked but also curious. I asked her how she plans to get brains to feed zombie mommy and she says, "Well, I will have to kill a lot of people, but I'm sure I will get used to it". There was much conversation after that.
What stayed with me was that it was not “if” I became a zombie but “when”. She was very sure I would. When I asked about where her dad and sister would be, she said they would be gone: likely the first people she fed to me. But I wouldn't know it, because all I cared about were brains.
I wondered for a long while how my four-year-old landed on thoughts of zombies. My oldest finally filled me in on how it had likely happened. The last time my dad had babysat, he got tired and fell asleep on them. Apparently, my youngest started scrolling through channels until she found some zombie movie. Come on, Dad!
20. Friend Bear
Okay, so my daughter is now almost two and has long since moved into her own room. We have one of those video monitor things where you can see/hear the baby on this little TV thing or you can turn the picture off and just get sound. So one night maybe a month ago I'm sitting in bed, scrolling through Reddit or something, and I start hearing my daughter babbling to herself. Now, it's really late, like one or two in the morning. Much later than she is ever awake unless something is wrong and she is sick or cutting a tooth or something.
So I turn the picture on the monitor on and see her standing up in her crib facing sort of diagonally away from the camera. I can see her hands in front of her but only like half of her face. Now is a good time to mention that we have been teaching her ASL since she was about three months old, and she has been responding and conversing in sign since about ten months. I can see her signing things like "nice," "silly," and "fun" and, oddly enough, "no," "don't like" and "bear." Of course being the good and loving mother I am (and really not wanting to deal with an overly sleepy baby in the morning) I get up to see what the heck she is doing.
When I get to her room she is still standing up and signing/babbling towards the far corner of her room. I ask her what she is doing and who she is talking to and she signs/says (as best as she can) "friend" which she does with her whole hands and not just her index fingers and signs "bear" again. I tell her that no, see Bear (who is actually one of her stuffed toys) is in bed behind her not in the corner of the room but she just giggles at me and signs/says "silly" and "mommy."
I can see she is wide awake so I sit down in the rocker next to her bed and try to figure out what woke her up but all she will tell me is "friend" and "bear" and occasionally duck down like she is hiding and making shhh noises. I finally get fed up and ask her who Friend Bear is and her response literally gave me chills because she doesn't speak well yet but she managed to say, very clearly and with the most serious face a 20-month-old can pull off, "No name, no name, shhhhh."
Well now I am well and truly freaked out so I tell her to ask "No Name Friend Bear" to go home because it is too late to play and I did what any good loving mother would do. I gave her a pacifier, went back to my room, turned off the monitor entirely and hid under the covers in my room where my good and loving husband would protect me from nameless invisible bears.
21. We Gave Him Goosebumps
My son went through a phase when he was about six years old where he would write, “Help me! Let me out!” on everything. It was on all his drawings, and he’d write it outside on the side of the house for the neighbors to see.
Then he started writing “Help me!” backwards, like some redrum thing like in the movie The Shining. It turns out he was really into that horror series Goosebumps, which was a series of books and TV shows for children.
In one of the episodes, there was a girl who was trapped in a mirror writing: “help me”. To the people looking into the mirror “help me” was backwards. So, this mystery was solved. My kid is just a bit theatrical.
22. His Name Was Cody
My nephew kept taking food from his house and said he was bringing it to a friend named Cody. We all thought Cody was a kid from school, because he had a classmate named Cody that he would go hang out with. Nope, it was much worse. I followed him to Cody’s house, which ended up being a cave just out of town.
And Cody was no friend, he was a wolf. Lucky for us—but not for the poor animal—Cody was deceased. The body lay there surrounded by all sorts of wrappers from snacks. My nephew told me it was sleeping.
I don’t actually know if he thought it was alive or not to be honest. He didn’t talk to me for a few weeks because I told his mother. He claims he doesn’t remember it if I ask him about it now. This was like seven or eight years ago.
23. From Up There
I was pregnant, expecting my second child and my first-born was then only about two years old. She had some speech delays and, because of this, her sentences usually only contained a maximum of about two or three words.
Anyhow, one day I was making dinner and my daughter was in the kitchen with me. It was a pretty typical day. Then my daughter suddenly looks at me, points up with her finger, and states calmly and matter of factly and in a perfect sentence: "I used to watch you from up there".
I had no words for her, I simply turned around and stared at her. She smiled and ran off to play. Now I wish I would've asked her more about what she meant by that.
24. I’m Right Where I’m Supposed To Be
I knew this lady who had lost a child shortly after childbirth. A few years later, she decided to adopt a baby from a young teen mother. One day, her adopted daughter looked at her very seriously and said that she was always supposed to be her mother, and that she tried to come to her once before but now she’s back with her where she was supposed to be.
The girl was about five when she said this and had no idea about the baby her adoptive mother had lost.
25. Angry, Red Eyes
My son was almost three years old when he called me to his room about five minutes after he was put to bed. I asked him what's wrong, and he replied: "I'm scared". So, I asked him what he was afraid of. Oh my God, his reply.
He said: "I'm scared of the old lady with the angry, red eyes!" It kind of scared me but I figured he’d seen something on TV or his iPad. I wanted to comfort him, so I bent over his baby bed in the corner and asked him where he'd seen this old lady with the angry, red eyes.
He said: "She's standing right behind you”. I froze and turned about slowly. Luckily there was nothing or nobody there. I kissed him goodnight and left him, but left the door halfway open.
26. Frighteningly Accurate
My dad watched his mother die of a ruptured gallbladder when he was 12 and still remembers it vividly. My sister, one day, randomly gets up almost an hour after she's gone to bed and goes up to him. The conversation went like this. Sister: Daddy, your mommy died in a red sweater, jeans, sneakers and with her hair in a ponytail, right? And her hair was blonde?
Dad: Drops book he's reading and stares, wide-eyed, and then says Yes... Sister: What color were her eyes? Dad: Blue... why? Sister: Oh, she doesn't have them anymore, just empty sockets. I was curious. And she goes right back to bed.
27. I Got Picked Up
When my kid was around two, she told me one morning: "Mommy, the ghost picked me up last night". I was like, “What?” I was surprised because I'd never talked to her about ghosts or used the word ghost or anything along those lines.
I figured it was something she could've easily picked up at daycare or from a kids show or something. A few years later, when she was around five I guess, she was like: "Mommy, do you remember how I used to cry at night?"
It was true, she had been a terrible sleeper and would wake up over four times a night and cry until we came to get her. She said "It's because the ghost used to come into my room and pick me up at night".
For her to remember that years later made me think there was some truth to what she said.
28. His Name Was Joshua
One day when I was shopping with my family, my little sister said that her imaginary friend told her that a burglar was in our house. We all laughed and humored her. We got home and started unloading the trunk. Then the nightmare began. To our shock and horror, a man ran out the back door of the house.
When we got over the surprise, my mom asked my sister when her imaginary friend had told her. My sister said that he'd come all the way to the grocery store and told her. She also said that the peanut brittle she got was for him.
My sister didn't eat peanut brittle before or since. She also said that her imaginary friend’s name was Joshua. This is not the only thing Joshua told my sister. We didn’t encourage her belief in Joshua, but we also didn't argue with her.
We had a dog that, incidentally, my sister hated. One day the dog broke out of a window and ran off. My sister woke up the next morning and told us she knew exactly where the dog was.
She got into the car with my dad and told him where to drive. Sure enough they found the dog lying in the street. It had been hit by a car. My sister said that Joshua had told her where the dog was and that his eye was hurt.
When they found it, the poor dog was stunned and had a broken paw. The impact had also hurt is eye. Because of my sister and Joshua, the dog lived another five years. Once in a while my sister will still speak about Joshua as if he was a person we all knew from our childhood.
29. Out There In The Dark
My two-year-old is sitting down at the table for dinner. It's dark outside. He looks outside and says "What is that?" He doesn't know how to say "who" yet. When meeting new people he says "What is that?"
My wife and I look outside and don't see anything. It's dark. We look back at him. He's staring into the darkness. We figure, he's a kid, his eyes are new, maybe he sees better than us. We freak out. Is there someone outside in a dark outfit and we can't make it out, and he can?
I grab a flashlight and go outside, looking for the trespasser. There is nothing. I come back in, he makes the same comment. I sit next to him and look in the direction he is. Like over 200 feet away, on another house, there is a small LED American flag that is turned on. It's barely a foot wide.
I ask him if what he's looking at red and blue?" He says it is. "That's a flag, buddy".
30. It’s On Your Side
One night, my partner’s grandmother was babysitting her four-year-old grandson. After she had put the kid to bed, she fell asleep on the couch in the living room.
Now, this was one of those wrap-around couches with a high back, so someone who is the height of a four-year-old can’t really be seen coming down the hallway by someone laying on the couch.
Well, around one in the morning, grandma was woken up by a small child’s voice slowly singing “Nationwide is on your side, Nationwide is on your side” from somewhere in the dark behind her. Well it was the little kid.
As it turned out, the kid was really into commercial jingles. This scared grandmother silly. Thanks, Brad Paisley!
31. They Were Safer At McDonald’s
When I was about seven months pregnant with my third kid, my husband and I put our two kids in the van—along with everything we could fit—and drove from the East Coast to the West Coast to start a new job.
The kids were one and three years old. During the trip, we stopped fairly often for pee breaks for me and to let the kids run around. On the third day, they were especially worked up, so we stopped at a park somewhere in New Mexico or Arizona or that area.
We sat down and let them play on the playground, as we had a little picnic. The three-year-old was having a blast, but something was wrong. I noticed he kept talking to himself, laughing at his own jokes and being generally weird.
When he came over to eat, I asked him what was up, and he said he was playing with Tony. Of course, I asked who Tony was, and he said it was his new friend. Then he started laughing because Tony was next to him telling him something silly.
It wasn't the first imaginary friend he had had, but for some reason this one was creeping me out. Even though I was a little nervous, I just told him to eat up, and he could play a bit more before we left.
When it was time to go, he was more upset than usual, telling me that Tony didn't want him to go. Tony wanted him to stay with him. It gets weirder. Tony said he could stay forever. I was, honest to God, just shivering at this point because I was dealing with pregnancy hormones and for whatever reason this was just freaking me out.
So, I picked my son up, and carried him screaming to the car. My husband had taken our 18-month-old, and we got them both in their seats. I realized I had left my purse behind, so I went to get it. Hand on my heart the next part is true, though I understand if you think I am lying or exaggerating.
As I turned around to head back to the car, I saw a plaque next to the entrance to the park, right under the sign. I had this sudden and weird feeling I should read this plaque. It turned out to be a memorial dedication to a seven-year-old boy who had been hit by a car while biking home from the park in the 1980s.
The child didn’t survive the crash, and his name was Anthony. We got in the car and left as fast as possible. After that, we only stopped at McDonald's play places for the rest of our trip.
32. The Gentlemen Are Coming
When my cousin was a kid, every Halloween he would freak out in the same way. He’d randomly scream out: “Gentlemen are coming to get me”. “The gentlemen are scary!!!” “They’re all bones!!! They don’t have skin!” This went on for about three years, every Halloween.
My aunt and uncle rightfully were confused and freaked out. Then, one day they’re in a store and my cousin starts screaming about the gentlemen. It all became clear. It turns out, he was afraid of skeleton decorations.
For some reason he thought the skeletons were called gentlemen. Apparently, at some point in his life, he’d seen one of the old black and white cartoons of dancing skeletons with top hats.
33. She Misses Her Star
My three-year-old daughter came up to me as I was sitting on the couch, reading. She leaned against my knee and heaved a big sigh...sort of an existential despair type sigh. I asked her what the matter was.
Her face was turned into my leg, so I looked down at her curly head. She turned her head up and said, “I'm tired of this planet. I want to go back to the star where I came from".
I picked her up, hugged her close, and said something like, “I know, sweetie...I know”. I never asked her about it again. Several times I sort of alluded to something that would give her an opening, if she wished to talk about it, but she never brought it up again.
34. Over-The-Top Empathy
Children getting their injections is always awful. Well, imagine when you have twins. My mother had volunteered to help me out with the task, and off we went to the doctor. We decided that I would hold the one getting the shot, and my mother would hold the other one. Then it happened.
When the doctor jabbed the one in my arms, to our surprise, it was the other one that screamed in pain. The looks between me, mom and the health visitor were incredible.
35. The Omen Was An Omen
One of my sons, when he was about one, used to carry around our DVDs of both the 1976 and the 2006 movie The Omen. So we went to great pains and hid them apart from each other.
Sure enough, he would search quietly all over the house until he found them. Both of them. And then he’d carry them around again. When we took them away, he cried and threw a fit. It was so creepy.
36. As Easy As C B A
When my son was three years old, he was learning the alphabet pretty quickly. One morning he woke up and flawlessly started saying the alphabet backwards.
I was half asleep and thought, “Wow, that's cool”. Later, after having coffee and waking up a bit, I realized he was never taught to say it backwards. I was in a state of shock thinking how was it possible for a three year old to suddenly think: "let me try it backwards".
37. Just Say No
I’m not a parent, but I babysit my sister’s daughters regularly. They are 10 months and two years old. The older sister laid down for her nap today, like usual, and was in her room for about 20 minutes.
I was down the hallway in the living room with the little one. I started to hear big sister talking, and she sounded scared. She was crying and sniffling a bit, but not loudly. I walked down the hall and peeked in the door and she was standing in her crib staring across the room, talking quietly.
I opened the door and she started crying loudly and saying, “No! Don’t do that!” While pointing across the room. While comforting her for the next 15 minutes, she would randomly look in other spots of the room, point, and cry.
Finally I said, “Do you want me to tell them no?” And she said yes. So I pointed around random spots in her room and said “No! No! No!” She was able to lay down and go back to sleep after that. I am worried that I have beef with the ghosts in my sister's house now.
38. Planetary Return
I was staying over at my sister’s house, and my nine-year-old daughter and I were sharing a room. My daughter was already deeply asleep on the bed and I was laying beside her getting ready to go to bed myself.
I was in that moment where you’re transitioning into sleep, but still awake. Suddenly, I heard her say in a very clear and articulate voice like she was 100% awake: “It is the return of Saturn”.
My eyes shot open, and I turned around and looked at her. She was still soundly asleep, as was everyone else in the house. I’m assuming it was some sort of auditory hallucination or the transition into a dream, but it sure creeped me out.
39. Second Coming Of Second Cousin
My daughter was about two and a half at the time. She’d been saying, “Hi John!” in her room even though there was nobody there. I said, kind of amused, "John who, honey?" She replied: "John G Hanson!" This sent me into shock. This was a cousin of mine, who had taken his own life across the country six years earlier.
This was a second cousin, and he didn’t have a last name she would have known. I asked her where John G Hanson was. She trotted out into the hallway and pointed to the stairs.
Not down the stairs, but straight ahead, if that makes sense. We waved “Hi” to John, and then I swiftly changed the subject.
40. Come See The Lady
This was almost 20 years ago. My youngest son was about three I think. I was up late on a Friday or Saturday night watching television while the kids were sleeping. My son came out of his room and said, "Dad, come see the lady in my room".
I was a little freaked out, so I went with him. We got to his room and no one was there. He just says: "She's gone now". I asked where she was or something like that, and he said: "She comes out of the wall".
41. She Hung Out With Her Dolls
When my daughter was four or five years old, she used to tie up her doll and hang it from the top bunk bed. You would walk into her room and there it would be—tied up with shoelaces, robe ties or what have you—hanging helplessly.
My wife and I would talk to her and express that it wasn't okay. She would say she understood, but three days go by and that doll is hanging again.
42. A Treasure Trove
At about 18 months, my son discovered that if he pressed the buttons on the boxes sitting under the TV all sorts of cool things would happen. Things like lights turning on and trays coming out of them and whirring sounds.
One day I wanted to play Mass Effect 3 and couldn't find the game disc for the life of me, despite knowing I left it in the Xbox. Since I'm not a really organized gamer, I looked in every game box and then looked in several DVD boxes.
No luck. It had vanished. About a month later I was cleaning up my son's toys and realized he had a bunch of stuff under the seat of this little wooden European car we bought him that he rode all around the apartment on.
Inside the compartment was my Mass Effect 3 disc along with all sorts of stuff my wife and I had been looking for for weeks and months. Apparently, he pressed the eject button on the Xbox, saw the disc, realized he could pick it up, did so and then put it with the rest of his "treasure".
43. He Greets The Darkness
While I'm a parent, the creepiest thing I've experienced was while at work at a child care center. I work with infants and we have a sleep room, which is sort of separated from the play area.
The sleep room was dark since we had set it up for nap time while the children ate their lunch. On this day in particular, one of the boys looked into the darkness, smiled, waved and said "hi!".
I looked over to the room and there was definitely nothing there. He was pretty friendly though and would usually smile, wave and say "hi!" to people as they walked past the room.
I asked my co-worker if she would mind putting the kids to sleep that day as she hadn't heard him say this. Yes, I sacrificed my co-worker to the ghost along with the children. They had a good run.
44. A Sixth Sense
When I was little, I apparently saw people who were deceased all the time. I had come close to dying myself a couple times from food allergies. I had to be resuscitated.
My mom told me she walked me into the hospital one day completely limp, turning blue around the mouth, and screamed "my baby is dying" but the doctors revived me. So, needless to say, the fact that I told her I saw ghosts scared her.
It got freakier when my nephew was stillborn. I wasn't there for the birth, but I apparently told her about how I had played with him in the sky, and that we would leap from mountaintop to mountaintop and other weird things.
I also apparently described him perfectly. Amount of hair, color of hair, and other features. By now my mom was really freaking out. Then, when I was about four years old, I apparently woke up one morning and told my mom how Jesus came to see me the night before.
How we were in a large white room, surrounded by what she believed to be—based on my description—angels. I told her that Jesus came up to me, lifted me onto his lap, and I played with his beard and "dress" while he smiled, laughed and played with me. Then he kissed me on the cheek and told me he loved me.
Yeah, she nearly had a breakdown because she thought he was letting her know he was about to take me. These stories are all backed up by my siblings too. I apparently scared them multiple times with this stuff.
45. From Under The Bed
I have a bedroom that is really dark during the night. As in, I can't see the hand in front of my face. One night I woke up to my daughter right in front of my face whispering: "mommy, mommy". All I could see was just a big shadow when I woke up.
It scared the living daylights out of me. This is something that my sons have done too. But not that close to my face. She also snuck into our room in the middle of the night and grabbed my foot to wake me up.
My childhood fear was realized except it was my own little monster instead of one that lives under the bed.
Freepik, cookie_studio
46. Don’t Go Up The Stairs
We were at my best friend’s mom's house last week on Mother's Day. They just bought the house so we were dropping by to give a housewarming gift. My three-year-old daughter was with us, and she looked at a staircase that was gated off going upstairs.
For some reason she asked where it went. My friend's mom said it was the attic. My daughter looked at it for a while longer and walked away. When we were driving home, my daughter said, verbatim: "Mommy, the doll in the attic has monsters in it".
I was confused and asked her to elaborate. She said, "Auntie Mary's doll has lots of monsters in it. It lives in the attic". She wasn't scared or anything, just very matter of fact. Alrighty then. I guess we're not going to visit her ever again.
47. It’s Watching You
My son was around four years old and I was driving him to daycare. I remember he was uncharacteristically grouchy. He said he didn’t want to go—which was very weird. After around the third time, I explained that mommy had to go to work, he got really quiet.
Then, his tiny voice piped up from the backseat: “The darkness is watching you. In the night they’ll come for you”. He never explained it. I slept with the hallway light on for weeks after that.
Freepik, wirestock
48. He Took A Trip
My teenage son barged into my room at three am yelling at the dogs and saying they puked all over his mom’s office. Half awake I shot out of bed and rushed in...to find everything as it should be.
I thought maybe he had a bad dream and was in a half awake state too. He then started ranting about how they must have eaten it and cleaned it up. By this time I was wide awake but not clear on what was going on.
Then the weird stuff kicked into high gear. He started whispering and telling me to be quiet because his cousin was hiding in his closet listening to our conversation. I was freaking out thinking my son had lost his mind and had a serious mental breakdown and separation from reality
It turned out the guy had intentionally taken 10 Dramamine. Why did he do it? Because he read online that they will make you hallucinate. Well, I guess he was right, but it wasn’t happy dancing forest elves. It was angry dogs and nosy laundry monster cousins hiding in your closet at three am hallucinations.
49. From Another World
When my daughter was around seven or eight, she used to always insist that she had lived on Mars. This was, apparently, before she was brought to earth to be born. She's 12 now and still brings it up occasionally.
It's funny because she's so casual about it when she mentions it. To this day, I can't tell if she has a really good imagination or if she really believes it.
50. She Read Me
When my daughter was three, we’d gone for a meal at a really old pub-style restaurant. She wanted the toilet, so I took her. The pub had the kind of washroom where it’s a little room on its own.
Now, she was in that phase where they are basically horrible and if you do or say the wrong thing, well…there will be the most almighty tantrum. At that time, her big thing was: no talking while she was on the toilet.
I know, three year olds are so weird. So, I’m standing there silently looking out of this really tiny barred window, while she does her business. It’s a tiny Tudor window, and the first thought that popped into my head was that it would be impossible to get out of if the place was on fire.
Don’t ask why, but that’s just my brain. She shocked me next. Suddenly, I hear her little voice say quietly: “It’s okay Mummy, there won’t be a fire”. Now I know for a fact that I didn’t say anything out loud, she had me that well trained not to speak while she was on the toilet.
Somehow she heard my thoughts. She did it again a couple of times in the next few months, and then has never done it again. It was so bloody weird.
51. He’d Checked Out
When my son was six or seven, he would sleepwalk. This was no biggie. I’d just lead him back to his room and get him comfy in bed. Except one time something strange happened. I led him back to bed, got him all covered up, and said “goodnight Connor”.
He immediately sat straight up like the Exorcist, looked at me all wide eyed—but somehow also blank—and said in a voice straight from the devil: “Connor’s not here right now”.
I never woke him up while he was sleepwalking, but I did that night. He had freaked me right out. It kind of freaks me out a bit still when I think about it. He’s 22 now.
Freepik, benzoix
52. It’s My Ball
When one of my daughters was about 18 months old, her cousin—who was not as physically capable as her yet, but the same age—took a ball from her. He was crawling on the floor playing with it, and she came up to him, grabbed him by the front of the neck of his shirt with both of her little hands, lifted him up off the floor, and started screaming at him.
It was the most unsettling thing I've ever seen a toddler do. It cracks me up now, but it was intense to witness in the moment.
Freepik, karlyukav
53. He Just Faded Away
So, my son was probably about four or five years old. I used to wake him up every morning. I go in one morning and he is already awake in bed. His eyes were wide open and the blanket pulled up to his chin. He is completely still and just staring at the corner of his room.
I looked at him, looked at the corner, waited a couple of seconds, and asked him what was wrong. Still looking at the corner, he says, "Somebody crawled on the floor, and up the wall, and looked around. When he looked at me his head did this".
Then he pointed his finger in the air, and just started spinning it in a circle very fast. I put my hand on his back and said, "Let's go get breakfast and watch some cartoons". He looked very freaked out, and I wanted to get his mind off of it.
As he is walking down the hall in front of me, he sort of half whispers out loud: "He just faded away". I didn't let him know it, but I was freaking out inside. He is eight years old now, and I asked him if he remembers it.
He said he does, and that's not all. He said that he saw it another time backwards crawling on his ceiling before just fading away again. Freaky.
54. It’s Just Blood
When I was a kid, my parents had left me to play with Barbies unsupervised for a moment. When they came back, I had drawn all over the dolls with a red marker. It was absolutely everywhere.
Then I calmly turned around and proceeded to explain that: ”it’s just blood”, and that ”an accident happened”.
Now I have absolutely no clue where I picked that up from, but my parents love to remind me of it even almost 30 years after. They were apparently quite creeped out by it.
55. Let Him Sleep
My grandmother and grandfather raised me. To me, they were my parents. My grandmother passed in 2015 and my grandfather passed when my son was five months old. My son was born in 2020. When my son was younger than two, he would stare into the air and giggle, his eyes following something.
I’m talking intense giggling and a real belly laugh. The giggling would keep him up at night when he was trying to go to sleep. Eventually, I just assumed it was my grandparents playing with him, and that he could see them.
My husband was adamantly against this, as he doesn’t believe in ghosts. But to me, the next event proved him wrong. One night when I was alone, I was rocking my son, and he was laughing and looking to the same area of the ceiling. He was following something.
Right out loud, I said: “Let him sleep, Nanny, you can play together tomorrow when he wakes up". Immediately, he stopped laughing, closed his eyes, and fell asleep. I told my husband and he thought I was nuts.
He believed it happened but was convinced it was a coincidence. But the next night my husband and I were playing with my son before bed and my husband offered to rock him to sleep. The same thing was happening, so I quietly walked in and sat beside the rocking chair and watched my son in glee, smiling ear to ear and staring at the ceiling, following something.
I rubbed his head and whispered: “Okay Nanny, let’s let him sleep for the night, he’s had a big day". Again, he immediately closed his eyes and fell asleep. My husband was completely freaked out.
Since then, whenever he did this, we politely asked my grandmother to let him sleep so they could play together in the morning. I’m telling you, it worked every time we asked. If it didn’t work when I asked for my grandma to stop, I told my Papa to let the boy sleep and it would work.
I barely believed in ghosts or spirits or anything before, but I do now. My husband does too.
56. Kids Know More Than They Let On
My mom told me this story the other day and it freaked me out. When my oldest sister was little, like 3 years old, she asked my then-pregnant aunt to pick her up to hold her. My mom said she was like "She can't pick you up, honey, she has a baby in her tummy." And then my little sister was like "That baby is dead!" My mom freaked out, but my aunt and grandma were fine and were telling my mom it was all good, she was just a toddler and didn't know what she was saying.
Well, lo and behold my aunt goes to the doctor the next day for a routine pregnancy checkup, and the baby was gone. Gives me the willies just thinking about it.
57. Since The Beginning
When I was 6 months pregnant, my great-grandfather had late-stage cancer. During his final days, my grandmother mentioned to him that I had finally picked a name for my son. He was very hard of hearing, and when he asked what I had chosen, he thought she said John, which was his name. He teared up and was very touched.
She didn't correct the mistake, and he was gone soon after. Three days later, I went into premature labor. My son was in the NICU for almost 4 months. As he grew older, he talked about Papa John a lot and was extremely fascinated with his old things at my grandmother's. He talked about him constantly as if he knew him.
He would say things like how he missed him and his hugs, and when we asked what he remembered about him, he said that Papa John stayed with him in the hospital. Once, while visiting my grandmother’s house for a weekend, there was a striking yellow butterfly that was on and around the porch every time we walked outside.
My son told me it was Papa John coming to visit. This went on all the time from ages 2-4. I should also mention that I was not close to my Papa John at all and never spoke of him. I just listened when he said all this and didn't lead him on in any way. He gradually stopped and seems to have forgotten all about him now.
58. Covered In Color
The whole family was out for dinner at a restaurant in the skiing village close to our cottage. Right when we walked in, my little sister told our mom that she knew the place, and her mother and she used to paint there. Our mom, confused, just told her that we’d never even been there before and asked her what she meant.
My sister told her that it was with her “mother from before” and that they’d paint there all the time. All of us didn’t know what to say. It was a little freaky, but we just shrugged it off as little kid talk. But then later, my sister mentioned again how she used to paint there in front of the waitress. Her face went pale, and she made a chilling confession.
She told us that the restaurant had been an art studio in the 1900s but was converted to a restaurant in the early 2000s. After learning that, our entire table, waitress included, got goosebumps and were at a loss for words.
59. Savor The Moment
When my son was three, we were at a ceramics place where I had a wheel-throwing lesson. He said to a lady, "I saw you in the fire. Did it hurt when you were burned? I was there, but I couldn't help you." She became white as a sheet. She said that when she was a young girl, her house caught fire and she was badly burned.
She told her family that she had followed a little boy, who she'd never seen, out of her room and then out of the burning house. She’s sure that my son is her guardian angel, and that he was sent to let her know this as an older woman to make sure she always remembers. We became pretty good friends until we moved away.
60. Punt In The Gut
My dad said that one time when he came home from work, my little brother who was 3 was sitting behind the couch having a conversation with someone. So, my dad asked him who he was talking to, and he responded, “Your best friend, Reggie.” My dad was creeped out because Reggie had passed right before my brother was born. That's not even the weirdest part.
While my mom was pregnant with him, Reggie was always around helping because my dad traveled for work. We didn’t mention him much after he was gone especially not in front of my brother, so it was weird he knew about him. Then once, my dad came home to my brother punting a football back and forth across our street.
My dad asked him where he got the football from, and he said, “Your friend Reggie gave it to me.” That really freaked out my dad. We only had like two footballs at home, and they were big, regular-sized ones, but my brother was punting a kid-sized one that had Reggie’s college logo on it. Reggie was also an NFL punter.
None of us were teaching the 4-year-old how to punt a football. My dad still gets creeped out whenever we talk about it.
61. Who’s There
When my close friend’s daughter was born, my friend and his wife lived in a very old but beautiful house where weird things happened. There was a peacock that hung around until they brought their daughter home from the hospital. They never saw the peacock again. Once, I was there when the wife was in the basement looking for some canned food. She ran up the steps screaming her head off. She said when she turned around from the canned food, there was a figure in a big brim hat staring from the far corner.
And the daughter’s room was always cold. A kind of cold that unsettles your stomach. And, as she got older, she acted very oddly on the video baby monitor. They’d watch her sitting in the corner of her crib talking gibberish to something off-camera. Then the family eventually moved for work reasons. Eight years later, the daughter was acting sad at the dinner table.
When asked why, she told us that she missed her friend from her old bedroom. Her parents were 100% spooked.
62. That’s Me!
My aunt lost her youngest son when he was 6 in a terrible lawnmower accident. Our family was devastated. I was really young, but I remember a lot of the time after he was gone. Years later, my aunt had divorced my uncle and had a son with another man. Her son was about 5 when we were all watching home movies together.
He looked up at the TV and said, “That was me when I was [cousin].” We were all shocked. It was still a sore subject for all of us, and we hadn’t talked about him since. Yeah, we didn’t watch any more family movies with him.
63. Beyond Her Years
My daughter was trying to walk at 6 months old and already pushing herself up but couldn't quite get herself to stand up. She screeched in anger that she couldn't get up so she just cried. It was so strange, but I figured it was just frustration. Well, we hung out with a Pagan group that always had classes at a local shop.
The group had all sorts of people from different walks of life: Christians, pagans, Satanists, Wiccans, etc. Around this time, an old lady was visiting family and stopped by the shop to visit. She saw our daughter and said, "Oh! Another old soul like myself! How you doing, you old lass?" We thought it was just a joke—we were so wrong.
Then the old woman turned and spoke to us, saying, "I mean that literally. I can tell she's frustrated at not being able to do what she knows she can. She's was a stubborn old coot in her previous life, you're gonna have your hands full!" As my daughter has grown, she's mentioned her kids and past life experiences.
She has definitely been a handful. What's worse is she remembers the end of “her life” supposedly. She said she remembers swinging from a tree and going to sleep. Oddly, she has a birthmark on the back of her head right where the skull meets the spine. She's mature for her age and doesn't act like a typical 1st grader.
She is more articulate and knows things that she’d never learned at school before. It's odd, like spooky. When we’re with other parents and their kids in the same class, my wife and I notice a divide in how everyone else acts compared to her. It's not impacting anything, and she’s still a kid, but there’s a difference.
64. My Little Monsters
I have two kids and they are both creepy. When my son was four, he told me he wished he could cut my head off and take it to school with him. A couple of weeks after her fifth birthday, I'm putting my daughter to bed and she asks "Why doesn't the lady in my wardrobe like you daddy?"
65. Too Quiet
We had an almost 4-year-old boy at the daycare where I worked who would get into trouble a lot during the day. He was a good kid but often was too energetic, and sometimes it resulted in him being separated from the other kids because he would get a little physical. One such afternoon he was sent to the office with me.
While I made copies, he sat at a little table drawing and talked to me. When I was done, I sat down next to him and asked what he had drawn. It looked like a crib or cage that had a person laying down in it with a big cloud over it. He said, and I will never forget this, “That’s me in my old bed before my life ended.”
I didn’t know how to react. I was so confused. So, I asked him how he came up with his drawing. He just shrugged me off and kept coloring. His quiet time was finished, so I took him back outside to the playground, and he acted normally the rest of the time that I knew him. But what he said was NOT what I was expecting.
66. Well, That Settles That Then
While waiting at a crosswalk for the light to turn green, my three-year-old was asking why I don't just cross right away. I tell him that I might get hit by a car and get hurt if I am not careful. He turns to me and says "But daddy, you don't die on the road, you die in a fire."
67. Better Timing
My buddy and his wife had an unexpected pregnancy when they were both pretty young. Knowing they were in no position to raise a child, they decided to end the pregnancy. It was a decision they’d struggled with. A lot of people knew about it, but nobody ever talked about it. Years later, they were in a better situation.
So, they decided to have a child. They had a healthy little boy, and everything was great. They saw no reason to mention the earlier pregnancy to the kid. And again, nobody else did either. One day, when he was 5, they were driving down the road, and he was in the back seat when he told his parents the creepiest thing.
He said, "God told me you didn't need me the first time. So, he made me wait before I could come back." I'm not religious, neither is the guy who shared this story about his son. But it gives me goosebumps every time I think about it.
68. A Message From The Grave
Apparently, when I was about three or four years old, I had an imaginary friend who was a British soldier in WWI. I would tell my parents about the things he'd tell me, one of which was about being stationed in India. My mom then pulled out a map and asked me to point out where India was. That’s where it got really weird. I got it right, obviously without having known before.
Shutterstock
69. Looks Like It
We’d lost my brother when I was nine. I look a lot like him, and so does my now teenaged nephew. I was holding this nephew as he slept one time when he was about 6 months old. And I was looking down at his sleeping face and thinking in awe about how much he looked just like my brother. It was almost mind-bogglingly so.
In a mix of baby love and incredulity at this resemblance I was seeing, I whispered, "[Brother's name], are you in there?" The baby's eyes snapped open, and he stared me straight in the face as if acknowledging me, but stayed sound asleep. We locked eyes for a moment, and then his lids slowly drooped back over his eyes.
I think it took half an hour for my goosebumps to go away after that.
70. A Visitor From Beyond
We asked my five-year-old cousin who she was talking to in the den. She said with excitement "I was showing pap my dolls!" This was utterly terrifying for one reason. “Pap” was what we called our grandpa, and he had passed that morning but we hadn't told her yet. We had actually come down to the den to let her know at that very moment.
71. Not Cool
I had a music teacher who took his 4-year-old daughter to an old theater in Alaska. She started crying immediately when she walked in, so he took her outside and she stopped crying. He took her back in, she started crying again, so he took her outside again. He asked why she was crying, and she said: "That's where the people with no eyes watch you."
72. Past Lives
My daughter would constantly talk about another life she had. This wasn't once or twice, this went on for years and in very specific detail. At first, I thought it was a story she was making up, but when it kept going and going and going and as specific as it was, I started to get really freaked out. She had never experienced anything like this in her life and we don't watch movies like that.
It gets very, very creepy. She used to say how her dad (then not now) used to beat her and put her in the closet and make her stand outside with her hands tied to a tree. He wasn't a very nice guy, she had siblings and he was nicer to the boy, he ended up killing her and her mom; she described her end very specifically.
One day, we were driving through Kansas over by Dodge City, and on the long deserted road, she said a house looked like where she lived. We had never been there before and this was actually one of the last things she ever said about it. It used to break my heart hearing her talk about it, I'm so glad it stopped.
73. Creep In The Corner
When I was 3 years old, I was sleeping in my parent's bed when I sat straight up and asked "Mommy, who is that man in the corner?" She was terrified. This happened every night until she went to the corner and talked to him asking him to leave us alone because he was scaring me. I still believe in ghosts because of this.
74. Get The Heck Out
My sister was once asleep beside me while I was playing on my phone. She’s a heavy sleeper and very little can wake her up. All of a sudden, she bolted upright and grabbed my arm while looking towards my window. I’ll never forget her next words. She whispered in a panicked voice “You can’t let them in.” Confused, I asked her what she was talking about.
“You can’t let them in,” she repeated, “they don’t have eyes!” Then she rolled over and went back to sleep. This would be creepy enough on its own, however, my house had similar events prior to and after this. For example, my siblings refused to sleep in their room. Eventually, they said it was because of “the girl without eyes that lives in the closet.”
I myself had nightmares of a girl with black holes for eyes standing at the foot of my bed. When I saw her, she told me that I’d “better wake up before you forget how.” Prior to that nightmare, I had felt like my blanket had been getting pulled off me repeatedly during the night. I had never told anyone about it so it wasn’t like my sister got the idea of the eyeless girl from me.
Also, the window my sister had been looking at had a bad history. Often at night, I’d hear scratching coming from it and my cat would stare at the window and hiss. I never saw anything there, even when I climbed out on the roof to investigate. The second I was back inside, my cat would hiss at the window again. It was overall just a very creepy series of events.
Shutterstock
75. That’ll Drive The Property Value Down
We were visiting a family friend’s house. My oldest son was about three at the time and all the kids were playing in the kids' room. They started getting loud so I went to check on them. They were laughing at the closet, running up to it, and then running away. I figured playing hide and seek or just being silly, so I left to talk to the adults. It got way too disturbing way too fast.
A few minutes later, another boy runs to me and says my son is climbing in the crawl space in the closet. I ran and found him with just his feet sticking out. Pulled him out and he told me he was going to find “her” and she told him to come get her. Apparently, they had been playing with something/someone in the crawl space.
“She” was making them laugh through the crawl space, they all see her, and then she told my son to follow her. I told the homeowner what happened and she told me her kids know not to open the crawl space door and the kids swear they didn't open it. But that’s not all. The owners of the house laughed it off, but in so doing revealed that it used to be a daycare/orphan home in the 1900s.
Something bad happened back then where a lot of kids went missing and they had to shut it down. It was an old house right off the train tracks in East Texas. All the rooms connected with a door together and they all had crawl space openings in each room down a long hallway. It was so weird. They don't believe in paranormal stuff at all but would tell me about hearing crying, feet running up and down the hallway, and books falling off shelves.
76. Pull The Trigger, Piglet
My sister's older daughter is a saint, but the little kid is a psychopath. My sister and brother-in-law indulge every crazy behavior of hers. One of the worst was last year when one of my sister's ureters broke and she had to get a tube from her kidney, out of her body and to a bag, while said ureter healed. She was pretty ill and was in the hospital for a bit more than a month.
Anyway, the second night she's back home, little monster PULLS the tube out of my sister's kidney, requiring her to get emergency surgery. The kid's excuse? She KNEW doing that would hurt mommy, but she (my sister) was getting SO MUCH attention from daddy since she got home...attention she (little monster kid) deserves more.
The worst part is that my sister and brother-in-law thought that was cute. The crazy part is that my older niece would have never gotten away with something like that, so I don't really get why they spoiled the younger one so much. I know she's my niece, but I just can't see past those behaviors and like her...she's six years old.
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77. Been Here Before
My son was 3 when he visited his grandmother who lived a few states away. It was his first time there, but when he got inside, he toddled to her, placed his chubby hand on her cheek, and said, "I have missed you so much, Annie." Then he crawled in her lap, patted her hand, and said he’d really liked her black hair more.
My grandmother Ann had stopped coloring her hair and let it go white a few years before. No one except for my grandfather called her Annie, ever. Later, he passed by a picture of my grandpa in his old band. He stopped at the photo and said, "That’s when I was playing in the band," while pointing directly at my grandpa!
At the age of three, my son didn’t know much about my grandfather other than he wasn’t with us anymore. I also didn’t have any pictures of my grandfather when he was younger anywhere in our home.
78. Twice Too Much
When my daughter was "booster seat" age, she sat at the end of the table that ran along the railing to the basement stairs. Every so often she would get incredibly squirmy and frustrated. Until she could talk better, I never really thought much of it. Then one day she tells me she doesn't like it when the man tickles her when she's eating at the table...the heck?
I ask if he scares her. She says no. Just didn't like him bugging her. Fast forward four years to when my son is that age and now sitting in that chair. I couldn't believe my eyes. Same squirms. Same frustrations. AND TOLD ME THE SAME FRICKIN' THING!!!! HE DOESN'T LIKE THE MAN BUGGING HIM!!!! We don't live there anymore.
79. It’s All Gone
When I was around four, I stared out my windows at night towards my grandparents’ house. My mom then asked why I was staring. I told her that I remembered that that was my room. When she asked me to elaborate, I just said, "Why did they knock down that dang wall?" My great grandfather lived in the room I saw from mine.
After he passed a year before I was born, my grandfather tore a wall down and made it into a sunroom. My mom didn't know about that and neither did my dad. So, when my mom mentioned it casually to my grandparents, my grandfather was in stunned disbelief. A year later when I was five, I stayed with them over the summer.
I was picking strawberries with my grandmother and asked where the shed was and if we were where we kept the pigs. My great-grandfather had gotten too old to care for the pigs, and the shed was torn down after a tree limb hit it during a tornado. This all had happened before I was born. I couldn’t have known any of it.
80. A Wild Goose Chase
I didn’t hear this but it’s a story from when my aunt was a little girl visiting her grandparents’ farm in Ireland. She had been sent out to collect eggs from the geese and when she came back she was covered in bites and scratches. She said to her grandmother “The geese won’t hurt me anymore, they’re sleeping.” What really happened was utterly horrific.
It turns out she literally killed them all with a big stick. She was six years old.
81. Technically There
One night, I had a nightmare where my family and I were at the beach with my mom’s brother and his wife. My dad disappeared, and a violent thunderstorm came. We ran and hid under a pavilion until it had subsided. In my dream, there were lightning strikes everywhere and fires starting. Some people were hit by lightning.
I remember being really worried that my dad wasn't coming back. I woke up and found out that it wasn't just a dream but a memory. We really did go to the beach with my mom’s brother and his wife, and there was a storm. My dad had left to the car, but the storm started, so he waited in the car since he was further away.
It was a very, very violent storm that came out of nowhere. A nearby shop was hit and caught fire, so firetrucks came. Nobody was actually struck by lightning though; that was my imagination at play. My mom managed to get some of it on video, and up until then, I had never seen that video because it’d been packed away.
The crazy part is, my mom was pregnant with me at the time. But here I was with a disturbing “memory” dream of an event that actually did happen. I don't really remember the dream and barely remembered the next morning. So, when I told my dad, he thought it sounded strangely familiar and dug out the video to show me.
82. Downward Dog
Right before she turned 5, my daughter was in our hall in the middle of the night, still asleep, whimpering and crying. After some coaxing, I brought her to lay down with me. When I asked her what the dream was, she got really upset. She told me that she remembered when she was a bad dog, and they made her go to sleep.
I asked her about it again later, and she got very upset. She said she was a bad dog and started crying saying that she didn't want to remember it again. She had no idea what it means to put a dog down. Let alone that it is what happens to "bad dogs."
83. Making Light Of It
My little brother and I shared a room together while growing up. One night I walked into the room. It was bedtime, I had school in the AM, and I was tired. The lights were on for some reason. On the top bunk my little brother, who was probably about six or seven years old at the time, was asleep. I hit the light switch and began easing myself into the bottom bunk.
As I began to lay down I heard, ‘’Turn the light back on.’’ I stood up and turned to look in his direction. ‘’What?’’ I said. ‘’Turn the light back on.’’ I flicked the light switch. He was sitting up, his eyes were wide open and staring at nothing. He was sleep talking. I asked, ‘’Why do you want the light on?’’ ‘’Because...I was born in the light.’’ And then he eased his way back down, closed his eyes, and fell asleep.
84. Das Creep
My son was terrified of his bedroom. He said the “snake-neck lady” wants to “hurt Mommy so she can be my mommy, but she scares me and I don’t want her to be my mommy!” Just a side note, the snake neck lady didn’t walk. She would only “fly back and forth all the time.” Oh, it gets more nightmarish. She couldn’t leave his room because her “snake neck is attached to ceiling.”
My kid also suddenly started speaking German around this time. I don’t speak German, and no one in our extended family speaks German. But, my toddler had a very...colorful German vocabulary. I was mortified when I heard a translation of what he had been saying! He only used German when he was upset/frustrated/angry, though. He didn’t go to daycare or have a sitter.
He was only ever with me, his dad, or my mom and dad. Where the heck did he learn to rage in German??? I love my son more than life itself, but kids are truly creepy sometimes.
85. Little Relief
I miscarried at 19. It was a deeply upsetting time in my life. I was far along enough to know it was going to be a girl and had nightmares of the baby girl I lost. Years later, this toddler came running into my arms telling me she was really good friends with Naomi who was completely fine and sorry for not being ready.
It terrified me because I never told anyone about the name that was going to name my daughter. Her parents told me that there was no one in her daycare named Naomi and guessed it must have been an imaginary friend.
86. Wise Beyond His Years
My then-three-year-old son casually told me one morning after brushing his teeth that "When I was an old man I smoked. And there was a fire." A few months later while getting dressed, he just blurted out "You're a baby, then you're old, then you're a baby again. Like a circle," and he then proceeded to draw a circle in the air with his finger. I still get chills thinking about these conversations.
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87. The Ghost Knows
I was sat on a bench in a cemetery. I had just had an argument with my then-girlfriend, and I was looking at the ground when I was aware of someone in front of me. I looked up and there was a little girl, about seven or eight years old maybe. She looked at me and said “Where is your beautiful wife?” I think I said “I don’t have one” then put my head back down.
I looked up a second later as I thought perhaps I didn’t want to look like some weirdo talking to kids in a cemetery, but she was gone, like vanished. I looked around and there was no one in sight and it was a bit away from the exits. Very odd and I never forgot it—but there was one final twist. I split up with that girlfriend, but we met again 15 years later and got married.
88. Say My Name
We used to joke that our firstborn looked just like my grandmother who passed almost exactly a year before she was born. But then again, all babies look like my grandmother with the no teeth and big puffy cheeks, so we didn't think that much of it. But one night when she was less than a year old, she was really upset.
She would not calm down no matter what I did. At one point, I said out loud in exhaustion that she really did look like Grandma Hayden. She immediately stopped crying and slowly turned her head to look at me with a look of recognition on her face. Those were the biggest chills I have ever gotten in my life right there.
89. It’s Coming From Inside The House
When I was little like five or six, I used to stay with my grandma for family reasons. Her house is old I think—I haven't looked up the history and frankly, I don't want to—but me and my little brother used to be very scared to be alone in the backyard at night. It was like someone was watching us. We also had a den of chickens in the corner and one night they just straight-up disappeared.
Like, gone. The cage was torn but nobody knew what happened to them. Also, my brother would say he could hear babies crying outside at night and that someone was under the bed ready to get him. I also recall him saying someone was banging on the window when he was taking a bath but nobody was outside to do so. I don’t know, that house was very creepy.
90. Didn’t See You There
I used to do short-term foster care. I had a couple of brothers at one point and was sitting alone with one of them who was eight years old. He stared into the distance and very casually and with no sense of emotion detailed how he was going to stab his brother and suffocate my partner in her sleep. He spoke about it for about 10 minutes before looking at me and asking how long I had been sitting with him.
91. A Family Affair
My three-year-old niece would often tell us about conversations she had with deceased relatives, two of which she never met and the third passed before she turned one. She was able to recognize them in pictures (unprompted), tell us the nicknames my sister and I gave them when we were little, and told us details that were accurate and that she couldn't have possibly known.
Hanka: Passed in 2015. she referred to him as Mr. ****** (his last name, but not hers). She told us he wears a suit and walks around with his hands behind his back. He wore a suit every day even after he retired, and he would frequently walk with his hands behind his back. He did get to meet her a few times when she was an infant, but he was bed-bound at that point and was never able to walk and didn't wear anything but pajamas in the few times they were able to meet.
Gran: Passed in 2012. Didn't name her but pointed her out in pictures. She told us that Gran wanted to make sure she grew up "proper and courteous." My grandmother was a big stickler for etiquette and made sure all of her grandkids studied an etiquette book as children. Poppy: Passed in 1991. She named him and knew who he was in pictures.
She said he was funny (he was known for his pranks) and had one finger that was shorter than the others...he lost half his right index finger while working on a lawnmower in the 70s.
92. The Burden Of Dreams
I used to sometimes babysit a teacher’s kid in my teen years (they were friends with my family). The kid was highly anxious and talked about having disturbing dreams which weren’t necessarily violent as such, but just had smaller disturbing details, such as mold growing out of people’s faces. She used to talk about a “rat man” she saw in the corner of her room.
I would often get very off gut feelings when she talked about this stuff.
93. Special In A Creepy Way
A couple of weeks ago, I was babysitting my four-year-old little cousin who I had never met before. She came up to me and said "Did you know that I strangled my hamster? His name is Fred! He is currently on my shoulder but nobody else seems to see him! It was funny watching the life leave his eyes." I didn't really know what else to say other than, "Can you tell me more about Fred?"
I was terrified but I love that girl and I didn't want to make her upset. Later in the night, she was telling me about how graveyards are scary because she usually sees old people floating around. I just sort of went along with it but honestly I think that girl is special. I am babysitting her again in a few days so I am going to ask her more about it then. Poor girl must see a lot of things she doesn't want to.
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94. The Man In The Corner
My daughter woke up screaming one night. Like, SCREAMING. I knew something was wrong, but I could have never imagined the reality. I went into her room to find her curled up in a ball against her crib kind of "pushing" or "fighting" things off. I pick her up and she smacked me in the face. I held her head and calmly said her name, but her eyes were wild.
She slowly came to, hugged me, and was shaking. The following morning I asked her what happened. "The man was here." I asked her where and she pointed immediately to a corner of the room. I then asked what the man looked like. She pointed at her skin "black" then made goggles around her eyes with her hands, or binoculars (you know what I mean) and looked at me. "Red."
It hasn't happened since. But other things have. I'm convinced she either sees things, or has sleep paralysis. But sleep paralysis doesn't usually involve her moving around, or running away from things. She's a creepy little girl. However, since we moved out of that house and my wife and I split there hasn't been an issue. Maybe I had my very own Babadook.
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95. Always Planning Ahead
I asked my seven-year-old cousin if she was excited for my sister to have her baby. At first, she was kind of sad, because she wouldn't be the youngest in the family anymore. Moments later she brightened up. "Oh! That'll be good because if they're younger than me then I won't be left alone when Nathan dies!" Nathan is her 12-year-old brother.
96. I'd Rather You Didn't
My six-year-old daughter was in the passenger seat a few days ago and looked at me and said, "Dad, when I'm seven I'm going to kill you. No wait, when I'm eight." I asked, "How are you going to do that?" She smiled and said, "I'm gonna drive over your head with this car."
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97. Meet The Parents
For a few weeks, my daughter started panicking at bed time about the "parents" that would visit her during the night. It escalated to some serious nightmares and terrors, and was also very creepy.
We asked her a lot of questions like: “Are the parents us?" and “Are they your friend's parents?” You never know if shady stuff is going on there. Her answer to these questions, however, was always no. It was just "the parents".
A few weeks later my wife is driving down the road with our daughter, and she freaks out: “Mom, look, it's the parents! That's when we finally figured it out. My wife follows my daughter’s eyes and sees a bunch of scarecrows.
Somehow she thought scarecrows were called "parents" and of course scarecrows are creepy. It was also Halloween so yeah, she was terrified of them.
98. The Others
My mom and older sister describe how I used to randomly start crying and asking where my mom was, even when she was right in front of me. When my mother would try to comfort me by saying she was right there, I would shout for my other mom. I would then describe this person, who apparently always held a bloody hammer. They said it scared them out of their wits, but one day when I was two years old, they tried to ask me about it and I couldn't remember anything.
99. Cocktail Anyone?
One time my son—I think he was about six years old—went into the bathroom and was taking a little longer than usual. So, I knocked on the door and asked if everything was okay.
He chirped back a little too quickly "yup!" So I left him be. Another five minutes went by and I knocked again and asked if I could come in to make sure he's alright.
When I got in there I saw that he had taken all the empty toilet paper rolls and stuffed a bit of toilet paper in one end. So, I ask him: "What are you making?" His answer scandalized me honestly. He proudly says, "molotov cocktails dad, obviously".
100. The Risk He Took Was Calculated
I instruct circus disciplines and had a kid (who has no problem completing the skill we were warming up with) randomly fall off his apparatus, screaming and crying. We were doing something dangerous so, of course, the facility handles it as a serious injury, the potential for a totally broken arm was there. After he went home, I watched it on camera.
The kid looks at me to make sure I wasn’t looking, lets go, and falls to his own doom. I was so confused. His mom called us later to inform us that he was faking the pain and he thought that if he got really hurt, he'd be able to see his dad. The whole situation went from strange and terrifying to sad and terrifying.
