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October 28, 2019 | Simon B.

Confused People Share Inexplicable Memories From Their Childhood


We all have perfectly normal memories from our childhood; Whether it be that first time Santa ate the milk and cookies you left out at Christmas, or that one time you fell out of a tree which gave you a weird scar on your leg, or even that 8-foot tall dinosaur-bird you saw while driving with your dad... Hold up a second. Do you ever think back on old memories and realize that they were not, in fact, normal? Some may chalk it up to a kid’s imagination, but who can really verify the long-lost artifacts that reside in the deep corners of our psyche? It makes no difference if we call it real, imagined, or perhaps a bit of both; These stories always intrigue us, amuse us, and often just downright give us the creeps. Take a moment, and ponder these inexplicable occurrences from the lore of childhood memory.


1. What Lies Beyond the Wall

I could lucid dream when I was a kid. I would actually get really excited to go to bed because I could decide what to dream, and then dream it. I had a recurring character in my lucid dreams, he was a boy my age with blonde hair. We would always play in this backyard/playground-type setting, that had a big brick wall on the edge.

One night, I dreamt that we really wanted to find out what was on the other side of that wall. We climbed a tree and the boy climbed onto the wall, looked back at me and waved, and went over it. I didn’t know what it meant at the time, but the effects were chilling: I never lucid dreamed again after that. It actually caused me a lot of distress as a kid.

I legitimately missed him terribly and tried so hard to lucid dream again but just couldn't do it anymore after that.

SO Said in Sleep FactsShutterstock

2. Apocalypse Can Wait

My mother walked into my room one morning, waking me up to tell me that most of the world's population was dead. I spent the rest of the day as normal, eating breakfast, going shopping with her, going to a playground, then eating dinner—albeit, acting quite nervous throughout. The next day, she tried to make it clear that what happened the previous morning wasn't true.

I asked her if she remembered, but she told me she didn't. I'm certain it wasn't a dream because I recalled the rest of what happened the previous day to her—only to be met by her confirmation that everything I remembered was correct, right down to how shaky I was, and how upset I seemed. All except for the part that humanity was on the brink of extinction.

Creepiest Things Kids Have Ever Said or Done FactsShutterstock

3. That Wasn’t a Chicken...

My family and I were driving out of Bellows, a campsite/beach for military families in Hawai'i. I lazily gaze out the window and something catches my eye. About 30 feet away in a clearing before a metal gate leading into the forest, was a massive bird. Like eight-feet tall massive. It had a long neck, brown feathers, and very thick long legs.

My jaw dropped. I was still processing what I had seen when my dad said, "What the hell was that?" Turns out he had seen it too, and we both described it identically. No one else saw it, and by the time our brains had caught up with our eyes, it was too late to turn around. I will always regret not turning around. When we returned later in the day there was nothing there.

When we asked a security guard about it, he laughed at us. I scoured the internet afterward, and it looked like nothing I could find. At least, nothing that isn't extinct—it looked amazingly similar to one of the larger species of moa... but those lived in New Zealand thousands of miles away and died out hundreds of years ago.

This happened back in 2009, and to this day I wonder whether I saw a Lazarus species.

Buddy Holly FactsPiqsels

4. The Real Annabelle

My sister had this creepy porcelain doll with a black tear on its face in our room. It was a gift from an old aunt, and our mom put it away on the top shelf of a bookcase where neither of us could reach it. We constantly told each other ghost stories about how the doll was haunted, was hiding knives, and would kill us in our sleep one day.

Kind of weird, I know but we laughed about how freaky it was. One morning we woke up and my sister was covered in blood. We pulled off the blankets and she had gashes all over her legs and big sharp pieces of the doll all over the bed. We never figured out how it got off the bookshelf and into the bed, let alone how it smashed into pieces and cut her.

Vintage porcelain doll.Getty Images

5. A Morning Visitor

When I was 10 or 11, I woke up very early in the morning to someone driving down our long driveway. It was dark outside, but I just barely peeped out my window to watch a man look into all of our car windows, survey our flower beds, and finally peer into my bedroom window. I pretended I was asleep, and when I looked out the window again, he was driving backward out of our driveway.

In the morning I mentioned what I saw to everyone, but no one acknowledged hearing or seeing anything, despite the man’s headlights being very bright (maybe even switched to high-beams), and he slammed his car doors very loudly. But I can remember how scary it was having his face pressed against the window above my head, and praying he didn’t try the lock. No one believes me to this day. I swear it was not a dream.

Creepy Kids FactsGetty Images

6. Call of the Lake

Every year at our cabin I have a dream I fall into the lake. I was told later that I fell in when I was younger. I never have this dream at home. I don’t know if the repressed memory is trying to tell me not to go on the water, or just don't be stupid and fall face first.

Buddy Holly FactsFlickr,Ano Lobb

7. A Striking Memory

I remember being at a playground with my family and seeing lightning strike right in front of me. Didn’t hear any thunder, no one else saw it, but I remember seeing it pretty vividly. Not sure if there’s something that can go on in your brain that would cause something like that to happen, but I remember pleading with my mom to believe that I had just seen a lightning bolt strike right in front of me, and she just ignored me.

Buddy Holly Facts

8. Roses are Red...

When I was six, I had a girlfriend named Molly. I moved away the next year and never saw her again. For the next 40 years, one of my earliest and most vivid memories was me watching a six-year-old redhead girl running away from me and up towards her house, yelling, “Mommy, mommy, Jonathan kissed me!”, and her mother’s voice coming back, “Well, that must mean he really likes you.”

A few years ago, I’d had a little sangria and decided to see if Molly was on Facebook—I know, I know. There she was! Right name, right age, right hometown, lovely red hair. I messaged her asking if she was the right redheaded girl. She wrote back that she was definitely the right Molly—and was happy to hear from me—but I’d got one crucial detail wrong: she’d only started dyeing her hair red after college.

Memory’s a trip, man.

Childhood Memory FactsNeedpix

9. The Talking Pumpkin

When I was somewhere in the four to six-year-old age range, I allegedly peed on my mother on Halloween. I was in my Batman costume and felt invincible. She did something that I didn't like, and I peed on her. Allegedly. I don’t remember this.  What I do remember, is the jack-o-lantern that night threatening my life if I ever did it again.

Like it straight up spoke at me. It scared the crap out of me, and it terrified me for a long time. When I was a teenager, I said something about it to my mom and she started crying with laughter and told me the story. My dad had a small tape recorder, and recorded the speech and put it in the jack-o-lantern.  So not unexplainable, but for years I truly believed I had met a sentient carved pumpkin.

Buddy Holly Facts

10. It was Only a Dream...

My family was staying in this villa where my sister and I had to share a room, and we both woke up suddenly. The window was open, when it hadn't been before. I realized she was awake as well, and told her I'd had a bad dream, and as I started to describe it, she started talking along with me, describing the same dream. 

In it, there was this black creature that looked like a bull; only it had shiny, scaly, plastic-looking skin, and was standing in the open window with this weird mechanical device. It somehow fired a projectile at the lamp in the room, which started rocking back and forth. Neither of us wanted to get up and close the window in case the thing was actually out there, so we called for our mum and she closed it and reassured us in typical mum fashion.

For months we would talk about that incident, and we could never figure out how we both managed to have the same exact dream at the same time.

Childhood Memory FactsShutterstock

11. Prove It!

When I was a kid, I had a classmate over who claimed he was a vampire. I didn't believe him. I told him if his eyes glow in the dark, that would prove he was a vampire. We went into the bathroom and I turned off the light. His eyes were glowing. It scared the crap out of me. I opened the door, ran outside, jumped on my bike and got as far away from my house as I thought I could.

When I eventually came back home the classmate was gone, and my dad was pissed that I abandoned my friend.

Childhood Memory FactsNeedpix

12. Neverland Security

I used to have nightmares. My dad put up a poster of Peter Pan in my room and told me that when I went to sleep, Peter would fly out of the poster and chase all of the monsters away. I never had another bad dream.

Peter PanPixabay

13. The Chesire Cat

I was about three or four years old when this happened. I woke one night while camping in a cabin, and I saw a cat tail dangle from this lamp. It'd sink down, and then disappear back up into the lampshade. It also started calling for me, going like "Whoo hoo!" It unnerved the heck out of little me...I can't remember if I just never checked to see if there was anything there, or if I did check and there was nothing there.

I chalk it up to just being so tired I was hallucinating.

Scariest Moments factsShutterstock

14. A Glitch in the Matrix

When I was about four or five, I was in the foyer by my front door when I saw my father come in the house, put down his briefcase, and then walk to my mother to give her a kiss on the cheek. Then the front door opened again; it was my father—again. I looked next to me where I had seen him put his briefcase; it was gone.

I looked back at him, scared, and said, "You just did that." I have never hallucinated in the more than 25 years since this happened, and nothing like it has ever happened since.

Childhood Lies factsShutterstock

15. A Transient Guest

My sister is 10 years younger than me. When I was in middle school, both my parents worked long hours and swing shifts, so I would take care of her after school on any given day. One of those particular days, my sis was napping in her bedroom, which was on the far end of the house, and I was watching TV in the living room.

I even remember very specifically that I was watching Clarissa Explains It All. The show was on commercial break when the weird thing happened. Aside from the sounds coming from the TV, the house was quiet as could be, when all of a sudden, from the other side of the house I hear a very decisive slam coming from within the house somewhere.

I remember sitting bolt upright and freezing in that position. I don't remember having any way to verify it, but I swear it was my parents' bedroom door that had slammed. Well, a full minute or so goes by before my sister—she couldn't have been a day older than three at the time—saunters into the living room with the sleepiest, dazed look on her face.

At that point, I was so jostled that I couldn't really speak. My sister was the one to break the silence to ask, "Where did she go?" As I regained the wits enough to be able to piece words together again, I asked: "Where did who go?" To which my sis replied, "The lady that was just talking to me." I have no way of really knowing for sure, but I'm certain that at that point I must have gone pale.

I distinctly remember the intermingled feelings of vertigo, nausea, and paranoia. No more than half a minute passed by before my sister shrugged it off and with humor in her voice said, "never mind" and went back to her room as if all was business as usual. I don't remember what eventually broke my paralysis or how long I was in that state, but I eventually got the nerve—after getting the largest kitchen knife I could find, of course—and did a perfunctory sweep of the house.

To this day, the part about the whole thing that sticks with me the most—and still sends shivers down my spine—is how nonchalant my sister shrugged it off. Almost laughed it off, one could say. It just didn't sit right with me. Something about her mannerisms that felt far beyond her years. Like a two-year-old adult.

Of course, through the years I've brought it up and she has always maintained not having any recollection of it whatsoever.

Disappointed in their children factsShutterstock

16. Pole-y Water

My mum told me that when I was a toddler, I would almost never drink any liquids. This was until I was five when I hit my jaw on a pole. And for some reason, after that, I always drink lots of water. Even to this day.

Water FactsPixabay

17. An Air of Nostalgia

I have this memory of sleeping in an office block in south London with my mum on an air bed. I recall looking out of the window and feeling sad. Years later I was driving and got a very strong impulse to stop outside this building and I was 100% certain it was that one. Every time I went past it felt odd. My mum says it didn’t happen, everyone else concurs.

My best conclusion at this stage is that I probably had a very vivid dream that became conflated with something else.

Childhood Memory FactsShutterstock

18. Dad’s Memento

I have a memory of a very small upstairs apartment. The only thing separating the kitchen from the living room was a countertop. My dad was in a chair in the corner facing toward the kitchen, holding me. There was a couch in the middle of the room with two adults sitting there, while my brother ran circles around the couch.

My mom was in the kitchen making a pizza talking to the other adults. It’s more of a recurring dream I had for many, many years rather than a memory. I finally asked my mom about it, and she confirmed it happened, but she said I was only around six months old so I shouldn’t remember it. However, my biological dad passed when I was 8, so I just kind of always took it as a memory he wanted me to keep.

Bilingual Awkward FactsGetty Images

19. I Believe I Can Fly

Sometime before the age of 5, I remember being convinced that if I tried hard enough, and believed in myself, I could fly. So, I would practice flying... jumping down the stairs when nobody was watching. I never developed my ability to fly, but I vividly remember basically cannonballing down 14 steps, and just gliding down in mid-air.

I remember landing at the bottom totally safe and uninjured, many times over the years.

Childhood Memory FactsShutterstock

20. An Angel’s Touch

One of my first memories as a child was when I was playing outside when I was three or four years old. I was hiding behind a bush and some kind of bugI’m guessing it was a spider—was crawling up the side of the house next to me. When I reached down to pick it up someone grabbed my arm, and I remember it scaring the crap out of me when I instantly turned around and no one was there.

I don't believe in god or angels, and I've always wondered if this was a dream because it's the only thing that I can't explain.

Stevie Nicks FactsShutterstock

21. A Burning Memory

I have a memory from when I was a baby. I have a scar on the back of my right hand, and I always knew it was because I pulled down a hot curling iron by tugging on the power cord when I was a baby. I obviously had no memory of it though. At some point in high school, I developed this "memory" of entering a room, seeing my mom looking at herself in a mirror, watching her place something on a table beside her, and then heading straight for that thing she had just put down.

I assumed it was a dream or a false memory because I was so young when it happened, like only around a year old, maybe a few months older. But then I described the dream to my mom. I could tell her the layout of the room, where the bed was, where the mirror was, and exactly where it happened. She confirmed all the details.

I feel like the memory resurfaced not long after a trip to Mexico where I was visiting the same house in which the accident happened. During this visit, my uncle was living in the room where it happened, so I never got to see inside. However, I knew it was that room for some reason. Visiting the house must have shaken that memory loose.

Childhood Memory FactsPexels

22. Lights, Please

Me and my friends used to visit a "haunted" mansion regularly when we were younger, hoping to see something weird. One day we did. It was a really large building, and it was always beyond me why someone would just abandon it and let it rot away. It was always apparent nobody lived there, so we got extremely spooked when lights went on in every single room.

My friends to this day swear they saw a figure running through the building at an incredible pace, not trying to look out the windows but just running really fast. I didn't, nonetheless, the moment they started running I also went full-on “Usain Bolt” mode. Since they still say it's what happened, I don't have any reason to doubt it.

So, either we saw something paranormal - or just a hobo that really liked installing light bulbs in an abandoned mansion, so that he can run from room to room just to scare people that are watching the building from the outside. Either way, for the rest of my life I for sure won't even remotely go close that building anymore.

Paranormal Events Experienced factsPixabay

23. Something About the Attic

I remember an attic and being genuinely afraid of it. I would sleepwalk as a kid and wake up underneath it, more than once having peed myself. The weird thing was, there was always Lego there when I woke up. I'd slept on it, and recall being quite sore. It was over 30 years ago, but I remember one incident with an incredibly lucid dream that still troubles me to this day.

I'm fine around attics now, never had a problem anywhere but that house.

The Weasleys factsPixabay

24. Black Sheep

There I was, a seven-year-old kid in rural Utah. I was staying the night at my grandparents' house on Main Street. I didn't want to sleep, so around midnight, I went down into the basement. I took my Matchbox cars and played with my glowing "Better Blocks." I had this little metropolis going on when my uncle came down to play with me.

Should I mention that my great uncle died when I was two? Well, he did. Anyway, my great uncle and I played for a good hour. I remember it like it was just yesterday. He drove Lincoln, because that was his favorite car. Anyway, it got late, and he had to leave so he wouldn't miss his train. He left, and I went to sleep.

The next morning, I asked when my uncle was coming back to play again. My grandparents were slightly offended that I bought it up. They hadn't seen him since before I was born and wanted nothing to do with him. He was the black sheep of the family. I said him and I played cars, and showed them the car that he drove in our city.

They were uncomfortable with this and chalked it up to my imagination. I had never met my uncle. Again, he died when I was two. Over the years since then, I have learned that he drove both a train (for Union Pacific) and a Lincoln MKVII. As I said, I don't believe in ghosts, but I don't know how seven-year-old me knew things about an estranged relative who died when I was two and was never spoken of due to certain family issues.

To this day I don't know what happened that night, but I remember playing with some guy who said he was my "uncle" like it was yesterday. He was super nice, and at the end of the game simply left out the back door.

Childhood Memory FactsShutterstock

25. Falling in Style

I have an extremely vivid memory of my brother and I standing on top of our backyard tool shed, some 13 or so years ago. We climbed up top, and then proceeded to fly around in the air about 30 feet over the grass. Eventually, we got scared that we wouldn’t be able to land, so we came back down. And of course, we couldn’t do it again.

Here’s the best part: my brother also has this exact same memory, down to all the details. We genuinely don’t know what happened, and still wonder it was real. I’m not sure how to account for it.

dawn_jelly

Worst Kids FactsShutterstock

26. Signs

I remember being seven or eight-years-old, standing in a smallish crowd of maybe 50 people alongside my parents, staring at the front porch of a white farmhouse at night, while a vibrant green light (almost like a green-gelled theater stage light it was so saturated and bright) shone back in my face. Someone was speaking intensely, maybe like an angry preacher, or the way someone whips up an angry group of people?

Everyone was staring and super focused on him. I remember all the adults being mad and feeling like something was coming. I can see this so clearly in my mind, and to this day I associate feelings of fear with this memory. But I have no real idea what it was and my parents swear it never happened. I still think about it sometimes and it sends shivers up my spine—like I’m forgetting the rest of what happened and it was bad.

Animals’ Biggest Power Moves FactsShutterstock

27. Fast Forward

One day, I was punished by my foster parents for fooling around in church. The old woman got so angry that when we got home, she had me kneel in the corner as punishment all day long. I remember looking out of the window when I was taking a peek behind me, and time sped up as I watched the sun move across the sky in seconds.

It was early (after church Sunday morning) right up until the sun left my view from the window, and the sky was the color of sunset. It was so weird. It was a common form of punishment, but it’s a clear and distinct memory that I’ll never be able to explain.

Childhood Memory FactsPxHere

28. It’s a Bird, it’s a Plane...

When I was probably eight years old, my mom was looking out the window and said, "Come look at this!" When I saw what she was pointing at, it was a silvery orb in the sky. I'm guessing it was a mile or two away, and it was moving left, then right, then closer, then farther. Each movement was very quick, and probably half a mile in distance.

I remember I looked up and said, "What is it?" She said, "I don’t know, do you think it's a UFO?" Just then it vanished with a streak, followed by a rainbow flash that instantly went away.

Childhood Memory FactsFlickr,DragonRal

29. Worm Theory

I clearly remember my mother explaining a concept to me when I was around six or seven, something she called "Worm box theory". Basically, she explained it to me like this: Suppose you have a wardrobe full of boxes with worms. Each box represents a specific time period, and each worm a human being. If you remove a box, you remove a certain time period, and the humans that lived during that time.

In the same fashion, if you take a worm from one box and put in another, you remove or add a person to a different time than the one in which they lived. I clearly remember with graphic details how she explained how the boxes and the wardrobe works, and how the removing and adding worked. She seemed like she genuinely believed what she said.

She claimed that there was a man (god?) that controls the boxes, and that one day he’ll say, “stop” and all the worms will stop moving, and the frail or sickly ones will die. Only when he says, “begin” will they restart their lives. My mother claims nowadays that she has no idea what I'm talking about, and that such a thing never happened.

Childhood Memory FactsShutterstock

30. Lofty Secret

When I was about six, my younger brother told me he wanted to show me a secret. He was three. We waited until no one was around, and he started jumping on a trampoline. He said, "Ready? Watch this..." and then he hung suspended in the air for about 10 seconds. It sounds crazy, but to this day we both know it happened.

My Life Is Over FactsPixabay

31. Happy Easter!

I swear, one time I saw someone (a full-sized adult) in an Easter bunny costume in our dining room. This was in my first house, so I had to be three years old or younger because we moved after that. My mom and dad swear no one dressed up, but I know I was awake and saw it. I thought it was magical/mystical as a child, but now as my adult mind remembers it, I get creeped the heck out.

Childhood Memory FactsNeedpix

32. Light Switch

I was outside during recess in kindergarten, playing catch with my friend. I suddenly saw the day turn into night, in the blink of an eye. There was no warning or "gradual" setting; the day simply turned into night. Everyone stopped playing and looked up. I remember my friend's eyes looking at me in horror, as my other classmates started to scream.

Suddenly, the memory stops. I do not remember anything else that happened after and I still get goosebumps thinking about that memory.

Childhood Memory FactsShutterstock

33. Soup-er Hero

I have memories of a TV show that never existed called Soup Man. I even remember part of the theme. This would have been during the late 70s, early 80s.

Nature-Walking Encounters FactsShuttterstock

34. Muscle Memory

I have a lot of false memories, but the most bizarre is that I did gymnastics as a kid. I remember the entire trajectory of my brief stint doing gymnastics. When I started, why I stopped, the pattern of the leotard that I used to wear, the gym setup, the color of the floor, the warm-up exercise routines we did...it's a very vivid memory.

However, according to my mom, this never happened. Not only did it never happen—but according to her, it couldn't have possibly happened, because we were too poor at the time to afford something like that. On the flip side, I have seen my mom forget things that I know definitely happened, so I guess I'll never really know if I actually did gymnastics during that period in my life.

Growing Up Poor FactsPixabay

35. Phantom of the Sheets

When I was super young, like four years old or something, I had some weird things wake me up. This happened to me at least four times that I can recall. I would fall asleep somewhere, and wake up to a part of the blanket, or like a ribbon crawling over my chest. In bed, it was a part of the blanket that seemed to come to life and just slither over my chest.

On a couch, it was a strip of the fabric that would come out from under the cushions. It had to have been some weird dream... right?

Childhood Memory FactsFlickr,Ben Francis

36. Spidey Sense

When I was very young, maybe six or seven years old, I had a supernatural sense in locating anything. I first noticed this when my grandmother was asking for her Tetris handheld game device, which looked like a huge GameBoy before GameBoys were a thing. I distinctly remember as if I had a snake's thermal sense leading me to look toward the back of the glass cabinet where the Tetris device was, where I retrieved it for her.

Ever since then I used that ability and could find anything my family asked for. I mean everything. Where's my keychain? Oh, the bottom of the drawer here. Wristwatch? Fell through the crack between the cupboards. I was supremely confident of that sense because it never failed me. This all ended one day when I moved to a new country and basically started a new life.

New furniture, new environment, new friends, new almost everything. I woke up one morning to find my parents looking for my dad's glasses, which he apparently lost when he rolled around the bed during the night. As always, I activated my “spidey sense”, which led me to the edge of the bed, my dad's side. I felt the glasses were there, right where I was looking at the white sheets edging off to the side of the bed.

But I don't see the glasses. I was profoundly confused as to why I could not find them, even though my sense was leading me to that spot. I began questioning whether I really had this supernatural ability. Aboutfive5 minutes later my parents found the glasses. They were somehow stuck between the mattress and the box. The kicker was that the location of the glasses was the exact place I was looking at, just the altitude was different.

My senses brought me to the point, but I failed to look through the bed, and just looked on the surface of the spot that was but a foot above where the glasses were. How could I have thought to look between the layers of the bed? That was the last time I had that sense. I find things with the difficulty of a typical dude ever since.

But in the days after I lost that ability, I thought that specific event somehow disrupted my sense. I thus told myself to never forget this incident because when I grow up, I would develop logic and sense and would not believe myself. I was already smart enough to not tell anyone at the time since I was seven, and nobody would believe me anyway.

I also knew that I would doubt myself when I grew up, so I needed some rock-solid evidence, or at least an unforgettable incident marked in my memories to remind myself that I was not imagining things. Well, over 20 years later, I still don't know what I'm supposed to think.

Brightest Things Said By Dull Students factsShutterstock

37. A Sinking Feeling

My family had a back yard that connected to another house’s back yard. Think of it like the houses standing back to back with a lawn in between. The other house wasn’t well kept, and the grass was always way too high, so we were told not to cross the property line.  Being a kid at the time, I wanted to inspect this hole in the ground on the other property.

As I got closer, I realized the hole was huge. It was a sinkhole. I was laying on my stomach and some of the ground gave away and I fell in. I got up and was standing and my hand just touched the rim of the hole. I remember feeling so terrified that I was stuck in the hole.  I asked my parents about this sinkhole, and what they did when I fell in.

It turns out they have no memory of it at all. Which makes me question if it was even real. The fear from my “memory” is so real, that even now some 20 years later (I was six or seven at the time), I can remember it very vividly down to the little details about the hole. It’s one of those things that has always bothered me.

Childhood Memory FactsShutterstock

38. The Monk in My Closet

When I was about 10 years old, I was cleaning my room and had just finished vacuuming. The floor in my room was a thick kind of carpet that left footprints after it had been vacuumed. After finishing cleaning, I left my room and started walking down the stairs. The door to my room and the stairs were next to each other, so while going down the stairs you can see through the balusters into the room.

As I'm walking down the stairs, I see something moving out of the corner of my eye through the balusters. It was a person in a brown monk-like robe, with the hood over their head and one of those rope belts. I saw this person walk through my vacuumed room and into my closet. I panicked and ran downstairs and straight out the front door where I knew my mom was visiting with the neighbor.

They ran upstairs and looked in the closet. No one was there, but there were large footprints that lead into the closet and just stopped there. I'm not a religious person and don't believe in anything supernatural, but I have no explanation for this occurrence.

Henry VII FactsShutterstock

39. The Moving Castle

I live in a town surrounded by rice fields, which happen to be the main source of income for all of the people there. I was maybe in elementary at the time, and my friends and I would always play by the rice field at any time of the day. ‪Once we saw this blue castle that was like a Disneyland castle built on a mountain.

Every time afterwards when we played, we would often see the castle and joke about how rich the owner must be. ‪After a decade had passed, whenever I’d ask my friends about that castle, they’d often get confused and give me this “huh?” look, which was weird, because these people are the ones that I played with during that time.

The castle is no longer there, by the way. It’s quite weird actually. I don’t know what happened to the castle, and why my friends couldn’t remember anything about it.

Childhood Memory FactsPixabay

40. Fabled Fossil Footage

I saw the original Jurassic Park when it was in theaters in the summer of 1993. I was 7 years old. During the scene at the end where the velociraptors are about to get Alan Grant and company, I very clearly remember the T-Rex suddenly bursting through the wall of the visitor’s center before it grabs the first raptor in its jaws.

The wall was made out of a greyish-white material—concrete or plaster. Back in those years, you had to wait a long time for movies to come out on VHS. When it finally did release, and my parents brought it home, I couldn't wait to watch it. I remember being confused at the end because I was waiting during that tense raptor scene for the T-Rex to come bursting through the wall.

Instead, it was just suddenly there, grabbing the raptor—as we can all see in the film. I thought that it didn't seem to make much sense now, because how did the T-Rex get in the building all of a sudden, seemingly without anyone noticing? I suppose I put it out of my mind, and always just figured that it was either my imagination or that the scene of the T-rex crashing through the wall appeared only in the theatrical version and was removed for the home video.

But then recently, I decided to Google that scene and was shocked to discover (at last) that there were others that remembered this scene as well! From the Jurassic Park fandom website, I found an article stating:

Rumors persist that the theatrical version of "Jurassic Park" included a scene towards the end of the film where the Tyrannosaurus actually smashes through a plaster wall in the Visitor Center. This scene was not included in the DVD or VHS release of the film, and no evidence other than first-person accounts has been found for this scene's existence.

Steve Spaz Williams in his Vimeo channel said no such scene ever existed. Spaz cannot be said of toeing the official line, as he is no longer with ILM or even in mainstream Hollywood for the matter of fact. So, it may be assumed that he is telling the truth. 

In other words, Steve Williams, who built the T-Rex used in Jurassic Park and worked on the other dinosaur effects, has stated that there is no such scene.

Dumbest FactsShutterstock

41. The Case of the Missing Aunt

My father was the youngest of 11 kids. That meant I had a lot of aunts and uncles. I didn't meet all of them growing up as a child, but I met quite a few. However, I was always told growing up that it was impossible for me to have met one specific aunt because she died "long ago." Yet I remembered meeting this aunt at my grandparent's house when my grandmother's funeral was being held.

I was a young kid, age 10, and there were very few cousins my age in attendance. In fact, my being there was seen as offensive to some of the aunts and uncles because "death isn't for children." This was back in 1979, so there was very little to occupy my time. I ate food because there was a lot of food on the table.

I sat and "listened" to what the grownups were saying, and quickly lost track because I didn't understand a bit of it. Eventually, my father got sick of being told that I was not welcome and handed me a bag of toy cars and sent me into a back room, where I couldn't be seen or heard. I played with the cars for a while when a woman came in.

She said she was my aunt, and she specified that she was my father's sister and not married to any of my father's brothers. She was obviously older than my dad but definitely wanted to play cars with me, which I thought was very strange. She wasn't dressed in black like everyone else, and she talked funny. We had fun playing cars for a while, then she left.

Everyone insisted for decades that it was impossible for me to have met her, and that I was wrong. I was also admonished many times to stop bringing it up, stop mentioning her name, and most especially, to stop referring to her as my "aunt," or to imply that she was a sibling to my father or any of his other siblings. So, here's where I explain what I learned as an adult—my family’s most disturbing secret. 

This sibling was born "wrong" somehow. She might have been developmentally disabled, had cerebral palsy, heck, she might just have been on the autism spectrum. But in the time that she was a child, you didn't acknowledge children like that. She was literally locked in an attic room, and left there, fed in the room and never talked to, or let out of the room.

When she was still a child, but not yet an adult, she was taken from the house and put into a "special home," a nice phrase that meant insane asylum, where she was warehoused for the rest of her life. The younger siblings were only told that she died, while the older ones were aware that she was taken away. She was still alive until 1987, at least.

And it was very possible and likely that one of her older siblings might have brought her home for the funeral of her mother. That’s where I would have met her.

Childhood Memory FactsShutterstock

42. The Traveling Mole

I woke up to a black spot on the back of my right hand. As I tried to pick it off, it started moving super slowly over the course of five minutes until it rested on my shoulder. It hasn't moved since. Nobody believes me, obviously. But, three things make this situation ever weirder: I wasn't born with a mole on my shoulder.

Also, my cousin and my sister both have a mole on the same spot. Well, I'm adopted. I'm Polynesian, and they're both white.

Childhood Memory FactsShutterstock

Sources: Reddit,


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