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 very unsettling imaginary friend. She called him “shadow man,” and he usually stayed in the corner of the room. Sometimes he would move around, and her little eyes would follow him the whole time. At first, she mentioned him casually and didn’t seem too bothered, but over time she started saying he was becoming mean.
One night, desperate to make it stop for her, I decided I was going to scare off shadow man myself. So I went into the corner, swinging at the air, and my daughter only got more upset. She said shadow man was laughing and now showing his sharp teeth. She was terrified. I was terrified.
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2. Private Eyes
I was staying at a large cabin in the mountains for a week during a family reunion when I heard the most chilling scream I’ve ever heard. It was awful. I’ve never heard anything like it since. It sounded like an animal caught in a trap...except it was human. It was my two-year-old niece. I ran into the hallway and saw her racing toward me, her face twisted in fear.
She jumped into my arms and screamed, “Run. Baby. Eyes. EYES. RUN!” She was shaking all over, clawing at my neck and clothes, trying to make me run. At one point she pointed down the empty hallway, still screaming about eyes. There were no windows there, just a locked door. Nothing but a blank hallway. By then, the rest of the family had gathered around to see what was happening.
I couldn’t explain it, and neither could she. She just kept saying, “Baby. Eyes. Baby,” and then would fall apart all over again. It happened two more times during our stay. Eventually, the family came up with their own explanation: they thought she must have seen one of her cousins sleeping upstairs and gotten scared by a blanket moving.
They laugh about it now. I was the only real witness all three times, though...and I can tell you that is NOT what scared her. I don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t another child.
3. Don’t Lose Your Marbles
I startled my mother and grandmother when I was about three. I suddenly stopped playing with whatever I had—dolls, maybe—and walked over to them and said, “I don’t like marbles.” When they asked why, I said, “They hurt,” and rubbed the side of my head. Mum kissed it, asked if it felt better, and I went right back to playing.
What puzzled them was that when my mother was 10 and her brother was 8, they had fought over a bag of marbles, and she had hit him with it hard enough to leave a big bruise. My uncle, her brother, passed on when I was only a few months old, and we didn’t have marbles in the house—at least none that my sister and I were allowed to play with because of choking hazards and all that. It was a very creepy thing to happen.
4. Addressing The Issue
My son was three and running 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 pretty shocked and asked what he meant. He told me he had been riding his bike.
He said he fell, hit his head, and woke up with me as his mother. I was stunned, so I kept asking questions. I 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 the name, and sure enough, that last name showed up just a block from where we used to live.
I asked what his father’s name was, and he said, “Everyone calls him Groover, but his name is Mike.” When I heard that, I almost collapsed. The first name on the listing was Mike. I asked how old he was when he fell off his bike, and he said 12 years old. Then he repeated, “Yes, you are prettier than my other mom.”
We talked a little more, and then I gave him some medicine and put him back to bed. When he woke up again, he remembered none of it. He looked at me like I was the crazy one. That moment has stayed with me ever since because of how accurate the details were. For me, it made the whole thing feel real.
5. Imagined Tragedy
I went to pick up my son from daycare, and the staff seemed very concerned about something. They hesitated for a bit, then told me the kids had gone swimming that day.
They said they hoped it wouldn’t be upsetting to my five-year-old son, but they felt I should know what had happened. I was confused, so I asked them to explain.
They told me that while talking to the kids about pool safety, he had volunteered that his little sister had drowned in a pool because someone jumped in without looking. Apparently, he told the story in a very convincing way.
I had to explain that he has never had a sister—or any sibling at all. They were completely stunned. When I asked him why he said it, he just shrugged. There didn’t seem to be any real reason.
I think maybe he was trying to make the lesson about pool safety sound more important with his story. Sometimes you never really find out why your child says the things they do.
6. Head In The Clouds
When he was 3, my husband decided to take our son on a small Cessna flight over the city. When it was time to board, our son climbed right into the pilot’s seat and got very upset when he was told to move. He started crying and apologizing, saying he hadn’t meant to crash it last time and that he’d behave this time.
My husband eventually calmed him down by explaining that his legs were too short to reach the pedals. Once he was settled in the back seat, he began complaining that he couldn’t use the radio, so the pilot handed him a headset without plugging it in fully. Our son immediately started trying to contact the tower.
He was doing a full radio check, trying to get clearance. At that point, the pilot stepped out for a short break, and my husband used the moment to talk to our son. What he said gave my husband chills: he told him that the last plane he flew had crashed and no one survived. When the pilot came back, they finished the flight without any more problems.
About a year later, we visited an aviation museum where an old Mosquito was being restored. Our son told the curator that he used to fly one, so the man offered us a tour. Once inside, our son started pointing out several things that were “wrong” with the plane, and every one of them turned out to be accurate.
The curator explained that the aircraft had been modernized and was now being returned to its original form. He confirmed that the parts our son had noticed were indeed scheduled to be replaced. Our son is grown now, has no interest in planes or flying, and barely remembers it beyond simply knowing a lot about aircraft.
7. Keep It Moving
My mom still tells this story all the time. Apparently, when I was three months old, my parents took me on a road trip to France. They had planned to drive through the night, but my dad was close to falling asleep at the wheel, so they decided to stop somewhere and rest. Luckily, they had an RV, so all they really needed was a campsite.
After searching for about 30 minutes and finding nothing nearby, they decided a church parking lot would be good enough. Around 3 a.m., they pulled in, and the moment they did, I started screaming at the top of my lungs. Up until then, I had been sleeping peacefully. They tried everything for an hour: a clean diaper, feeding me, walking me around, rocking me.
Nothing helped. Realizing they weren’t going to get any sleep there, they decided to get back on the road. The instant they left the parking lot, I stopped crying. Just like flipping a light switch. It still unsettles them 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 I got to sleep in their bed. I was trying to drift off, and the flicker of the TV was calming. Then, all at once, I felt freezing cold. I wasn’t exactly scared, but a chill ran down my spine. Then I noticed a different kind of light.
Nervously, I turned toward it. What I saw almost made me scream. Beside the bed was an older woman, translucent and glowing with a blue tint. I wasn’t afraid of her exactly, but her presence was overwhelming. She sat in the rocking chair holding a dog and looking straight at me. I instantly hid under the covers and turned away, squeezing my eyes shut.
After what felt like forever, I opened my eyes again. This time the blue light had been replaced by a warm orange glow. I peeked out and saw men on fire, just standing there burning. I tried turning away, but the woman was still there. This time she was standing. Her mouth didn’t move, but I heard a voice telling me everything was okay.
I don’t remember anything after that. The next morning, I stayed in bed until my parents came to get me. They could tell I was shaken, and after a lot of gentle encouragement, I told them about my nightmare. They dismissed it as a child’s imagination. But then they told my grandfather, a normally quiet and stoic man, and he nearly collapsed.
He was crying and unable to speak. Once he finally calmed down enough, he explained that when he came home from Vietnam, he would lie in bed and have panic attacks. His mother would stand over him to comfort him while he relived his time as a soldier using a flamethrower. And when he finally slept, she would sit in the rocking chair to make sure he could rest.
9. Blue Lady’s Hands
When my daughter was around three or four, she started talking about “the blue lady.” My wife and I asked who she was, and her answer seriously creeped me out. She said, “I don’t know, but she wants her hands back.”
That sent a chill through both of us. It went on for a few weeks, and the story never changed: the blue lady wanted her hands.
We were just about ready to call in a priest or someone else to bless the house. Then one morning, I was watching TV, and a woman in a blue U.S. Postal Service uniform came on, saying, “Thanks to this hand cream, I got my hands back!” My daughter came running into the room shouting, “That’s the blue lady! I love her!”
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10. Past Life
When my nephew was about three years old, I was showing him a Sonic the Hedgehog game. Out of nowhere, he said, “I’ve played that before, with my old Grandad.” That was strange for two reasons: I knew he had never played that game before, and he didn’t have an “old Grandad.”
His mom pulled me aside and explained that he often talked about his “old life,” and she’d managed to piece some of it together from things he said. My nephew believed he had passed on when he was 13, and that his previous family had been very sad about it.
In that family, he said there were lots of brothers and sisters, and they all lived in a flat with his old mom and dad, who were kind people but didn’t have many teeth. He believed that he had chosen my brother and sister-in-law to be his new parents.
He was always very consistent and very insistent that his old mom and dad were good people. It was definitely strange. I’m not sure whether he still talks about them now that he’s started school.
11. Only Near Cemeteries
When my daughter was little, we’d be driving somewhere and she would suddenly say, “My sisters are here!” Then she’d lean over and excitedly whisper to the empty seat next to her.
She was always cheerful about it. She talked about “Ira” and other sisters whose names she didn’t know. She was always glad to see them. Since she was an only child, I wasn’t too worried about imaginary friends. What unsettled me was something else: she only ever mentioned them when we were near cemeteries.
It was one of those strange things you try to explain away. She’d say it, and I’d glance around, relieved there weren’t any headstones nearby, only to spot a tiny family graveyard hidden in the brush by the road a minute later.
One time it happened while we were on vacation. She said it at the bottom of a hill. When we reached the top, there was a cemetery on the other side. I have no idea why, and she never mentioned the cemeteries themselves or seemed to notice them.
It happened often, and eventually I just brushed it off. Later, when she got older, it stopped. She’s a teenager now and says that when she tries to remember it, it feels like a dark room full of different girls, with the light only shining on the one she knew as Ira standing in front.
I looked up the name Ira. In Hebrew, it means “watchful.”
12. Billy Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
I had a friend who grew up in a very old house—I think it was built in the 1750s. When she was little, she had an imaginary friend named Billy for a few weeks. She would play dolls and make-believe with him in her room, and her parents didn’t think much of it.
One day, they noticed she was unusually quiet, so they went to check on her. What they saw really frightened them. She was sitting on the floor, staring at a blank section of the wall. There were no pictures or anything there.
They asked what she was doing, and she said, “Playing with Billy.” It seemed a little strange, but they figured kids can be odd and let it go. After that day, though, she never played with Billy again.
A few years later, her parents had to have the drywall in her room cut open for some reason. That’s when they found something unsettling. The workers discovered the name “Billy” scratched into a beam inside the wall.
Naturally, her parents were shocked and looked into it. Apparently, a little boy named Billy had passed on the property sometime in the late 1800s. My friend doesn’t remember any of this. Her mom told us the story when we were older.
13. Here “Him” Comes
My cousin has an eye condition where his eyes don’t adjust normally to light or darkness, so he could see clearly in the dark while the rest of us saw nothing but black. We were out camping one summer, sitting around the fire.
The fire made it even harder for us to see beyond its glow. We were basically surrounded by darkness. Then, out of nowhere, my cousin said in a very eerie voice, “Here him comes.”
We all started panicking and asking, “Who?” But he just kept repeating, “Here him comes.” Then a fox suddenly stepped out of the darkness and walked right up to a group of people sitting by the fire. That’s a pretty strange thing for a fox to do.
14. Grandma Did It
When my daughter was learning her ABCs, she sang the whole alphabet one morning at breakfast for the first time. We praised her and asked if she’d been practicing at daycare.
She said no. She told us that “mommy’s mommy taught me when I was in bed.” Mommy’s mommy would have been her grandmother... who had been buried three years earlier.
15. Where’s My Sister?
One day, when my son was about three years old, he started asking all sorts of questions about his younger sister. He even described how she dressed and what her personality was like.
I kept asking if he meant one of his cousins, a friend from school, or maybe a character from one of his favorite shows, but that only upset him more. By the time my wife walked into the room, he was almost stomping his feet in frustration, asking questions I couldn’t answer.
After my wife tried to calm him down and gently explain that there was no little sister, he got even more upset and shouted, “Then why does she look just like you?” My wife ran from the room crying and slammed the bedroom door behind her, because there was something he could not possibly have known.
Just over a year earlier, my wife had miscarried at around nine weeks. It was a painful loss, and she still hasn’t fully healed from it. I still don’t know who my son was talking about.
The good news is that he never brought it up again after that day. He has a real little sister now. Still, it was one of the creepiest conversations I’ve ever had, and I’ll never forget it.
16. He Understood Perfectly
I grew up in a big family, and one time all of us went to a park with a small pond where kids could swim. I was sitting by the shore with a few of my siblings when we noticed our youngest brother thrashing around with his head under the water.
Our oldest sibling was just standing there, pointing and laughing. The rest of us immediately jumped up and pulled our little brother out. He coughed up some water and was pretty shaken, but thankfully he was okay.
We asked the oldest if he understood what could have happened if our brother had stayed underwater much longer. His answer still gives me chills: “Yeah, he would have drowned.” None of us knew what to say to that.
17. I Saw You In The Window
When my daughter was four, she was playing in the backyard while I quickly stepped inside to do something in the kitchen downstairs. I never went upstairs to the bedrooms.
A minute later, I came back outside, and she said, “Mommy, why were you in my room? I saw you looking out the window at me.” That scared me badly, because we were definitely the only ones home.
I told her I hadn’t gone upstairs, but she got upset and insisted she had seen me looking out from her bedroom window. Very reluctantly, I went upstairs to check. I was terrified, but there was nobody there—nothing at all.
18. Let It Go
When my son was about three, he woke me up in the middle of the night. He was standing there in the dark with a black blanket draped over his head, looking like a tiny Sith Lord. To make it even worse, he was whispering the song from Frozen.
“Let it go,” he whispered. “Let it go.” I can’t even explain how creepy that was or how long it took me to get back to sleep.
19. She Feeds Them Brains
My youngest daughter was around four, and we were sitting on the couch watching PBS Kids. Out of nowhere, she reached over and paused the TV. Then she looked at me sweetly and said, “Mommy, when you turn into a zombie, I’ll have to lock you in a room and keep you there. I promise I’ll feed you brains every day, but you can’t have my brains.”
I was stunned, but also curious. I asked how she planned to get brains for zombie mommy, and she said, “Well, I’ll have to take the lives of a lot of people, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it.” We had a lot to talk about after that.
What really stayed with me was that it wasn’t “if” I became a zombie, but “when.” She was completely certain it would happen. When I asked where her dad and sister would be, she said they’d be gone—probably the first people she fed to me. But, according to her, I wouldn’t know, because all I’d care about was brains.
For a long time, I wondered how my four-year-old had gotten so focused on zombies. My oldest finally explained what probably happened. The last time my dad babysat, he fell asleep while watching them. Apparently, my youngest started flipping through channels and found a zombie movie. Thanks, Dad.
20. Friend Bear
My daughter is almost two now and has been sleeping in her own room for a while. We have one of those video baby monitors where you can watch and hear the baby, or turn the screen off and just listen. One night about a month ago, I was in bed scrolling through Reddit or something when I heard her babbling to herself. It was really late—around one or two in the morning. She’s never awake that late unless she’s sick or teething.
So I turned the screen on and saw her standing in her crib, facing partly away from the camera. I could see her hands and only part of her face. This is important: we’ve been teaching her ASL since she was about three months old, and she’s been signing back and forth with us since around ten months. I could see her signing things like “nice,” “silly,” and “fun,” but also “no,” “don’t like,” and “bear.” Being the loving mother I am—and also not wanting to deal with an exhausted toddler the next day—I got up to see what she was doing.
When I got to her room, she was still standing there, signing and babbling toward the far corner. I asked what she was doing and who she was talking to, and she signed and said, as best she could, “friend.” She used both hands, not just her index fingers, and then signed “bear” again. I told her that no, Bear—one of her stuffed animals—was in bed behind her, not in the corner. She just giggled at me and signed and said, “Silly mommy.”
She was clearly wide awake, so I sat down in the rocker next to her crib and tried to figure out what had woken her up. But all she would say was “friend” and “bear,” and every so often she would duck down like she was hiding and make shushing sounds. Finally, I asked her who “Friend Bear” was, and her answer gave me chills. She didn’t talk very clearly yet, but this time she said, very plainly and with the most serious face a 20-month-old can make, “No name, no name, shhhhh.”
At that point I was completely freaked out, so I told her to ask “No Name Friend Bear” to go home because it was too late to play. Then I did what any loving mother would do: gave her a pacifier, went back to my room, turned the monitor off completely, and hid under the covers while trusting my loving husband to protect me from nameless invisible bears.
21. We Gave Him Goosebumps
My son went through a phase when he was about six where he wrote, “Help me! Let me out!” on everything. It showed up on all his drawings, and he’d even write it outside on the side of the house where the neighbors could see it.
Then he started writing “Help me!” backward, kind of like the “redrum” scene from The Shining. It turned out he was really into Goosebumps, the horror book and TV series for kids.
In one episode, there was a girl trapped in a mirror writing, “Help me.” To anyone looking at the mirror, the words appeared backward. So that mystery was solved. My kid was just a little dramatic.
22. His Name Was Cody
My nephew kept taking food from home and said he was bringing it to a friend named Cody. We all assumed Cody was a kid from school, since he had a classmate by that name he used to spend time with. Nope, it was much stranger. I followed him to Cody’s house, which turned out to be a cave just outside town.
And Cody wasn’t a friend—he was a wolf. Luckily for us, though sadly for the animal, Cody was no longer alive. The body was lying there surrounded by all kinds of snack wrappers. My nephew told me Cody was sleeping.
I honestly don’t know whether he believed Cody was still alive or not. He didn’t speak to me for a few weeks after I told his mother. If I ask him about it now, he says he doesn’t remember. This was seven or eight years ago.
23. From Up There
I was pregnant with my second child, and my firstborn was only about two years old at the time. She had some speech delays, so her sentences usually only had two or three words at most.
Anyway, one day I was making dinner and my daughter was in the kitchen with me. It was a completely normal day. Then she suddenly looked at me, pointed upward, and said calmly, matter-of-factly, and in a perfect sentence: “I used to watch you from up there.”
I didn’t know what to say. I just turned and stared at her. She smiled and ran off to play. Now I wish I’d asked her more about what she meant.
24. I’m Right Where I’m Supposed To Be
I knew a woman who had lost a baby shortly after giving birth. A few years later, she decided to adopt a baby from a young teenage mother. One day, her adopted daughter looked at her very seriously and said that she was always meant to be her mother, and that she had tried to come to her once before, but now she was back where she was supposed to be.
The girl was about five when she said this, and she had no knowledge of the baby her adoptive mother had lost.
25. Cocktail Anyone?
One time, my son—he was around six, I think—went into the bathroom and stayed in there longer than usual. So I knocked and asked if everything was okay.
He answered a little too fast with, “Yep!” so I let him be. But after another five minutes, I knocked again and asked if I could come in just to make sure he was alright.
When I opened the door, I saw he had taken all the empty toilet paper rolls and stuffed a little toilet paper into one end of each one. So I asked, “What are you making?” His answer honestly shocked me. He looked proud of himself and said, “Molotov cocktails, Dad. Obviously.”
26. Frighteningly Accurate
My dad was 12 when he watched his mother pass on from a ruptured gallbladder, and he still remembers every detail. One night, almost an hour after my sister had gone to bed, she suddenly got up and walked over to him. The conversation went like this:
Sister: “Daddy, your mommy passed on wearing a red sweater, jeans, sneakers, and her hair was in a ponytail, right? And her hair was blonde?”
Dad: He drops the book he’s reading, stares at her wide-eyed, and finally 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.”
Then she calmly went right back to bed.
27. I Got Picked Up
When my daughter was about two, she told me one morning, “Mommy, the ghost picked me up last night.” I was stunned because I had never talked to her about ghosts or even used that word around her.
I assumed it was something she might have heard at daycare or on a kids’ show. But a few years later, when she was around five, she said, “Mommy, do you remember how I used to cry at night?”
She had actually been a terrible sleeper and used to wake up more than four times a night, crying until we came for her. Then she said, “It’s because the ghost used to come into my room and pick me up at night.”
The fact that she still remembered saying that years later made me wonder if there was some truth to it.
28. His Name Was Joshua
One day, while I was out shopping with my family, my little sister said her imaginary friend had told her there was a burglar in our house. We all laughed and played along.
When we got home and started unloading the trunk, everything changed. To our shock, a man came running out the back door of the house.
After we got over the surprise, my mom asked my sister when her imaginary friend had told her. My sister said he had come all the way to the grocery store to tell her. She also said the peanut brittle she got was for him.
My sister never ate peanut brittle before that and never did again. She also said her imaginary friend’s name was Joshua. This wasn’t the only thing Joshua told her. We didn’t encourage the idea, but we didn’t argue with her either.
We had a dog that my sister, oddly enough, couldn’t stand. One day the dog broke through a window and ran off. The next morning, my sister woke up and said she knew exactly where the dog was.
She got in 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 Joshua had told her where the dog was and that its eye was hurt.
When they found the dog, it was dazed and had a broken paw. One of its eyes was injured too. Because of my sister and Joshua, the dog lived another five years. Even now, my sister still talks about Joshua like he was someone we all all knew growing up.
29. Out There In The Dark
My two-year-old was sitting at the table for dinner. It was dark outside. He looked out the window and said, “What is that?” He didn’t know how to say “who” yet, so whenever he met someone new, he’d say, “What is that?”
My wife and I looked outside and didn’t see anything. It was pitch black. We looked back at him, and he was still staring out into the darkness. We started to panic a little. He was a little kid with sharp eyes—maybe he could see someone out there that we couldn’t.
I grabbed a flashlight and went outside to look for whoever might be there. There was nothing. When I came back in, he said it again. So I sat next to him and looked more carefully in the direction he was facing. More than 200 feet away, on another house, there was a tiny LED American flag turned on. It was barely a foot wide.
I asked him, “Is the thing you’re looking at red and blue?”
He said yes.
“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 put him to bed, she fell asleep on the couch in the living room.
It was one of those wraparound couches with a high back, so if a four-year-old walked down the hallway, someone lying on the couch wouldn’t be able to see him coming.
Around one in the morning, grandma woke up to a small child’s voice slowly singing, “Nationwide is on your side, Nationwide is on your side,” from somewhere in the dark behind her.
It was the little kid.
Turns out, he was really into commercial jingles at the time. Still, it scared his grandmother half to her grave. Thanks, Brad Paisley!
31. They Were Safer At McDonald’s
When I was about seven months pregnant with my third child, my husband and I loaded our two kids into the van—along with everything we could squeeze in—and drove from the East Coast to the West Coast so he could start a new job.
The kids were one and three. We stopped pretty often on the way so I could use the bathroom and the kids could get out and move around. On the third day, they were especially restless, so we pulled over at a park somewhere in New Mexico or Arizona, or around there.
We sat down, let them play on the playground, and had a small picnic. My three-year-old was having a great time, but something felt off. I noticed he kept talking to himself, laughing at his own jokes, and acting kind of strange.
When he came over to eat, I asked what was going on, and he told me he was playing with Tony. Naturally, I asked who Tony was, and he said Tony was his new friend. Then he started laughing again because Tony, apparently, was standing next to him saying something funny.
It wasn’t the first imaginary friend he’d had, but for some reason this one really unsettled me. Even though I felt a little uneasy, I just told him to eat his lunch and said he could go play a little longer before we had to leave.
When it was time to go, he was much more upset than usual. He kept saying Tony didn’t want him to leave. Tony wanted him to stay there with him. Then it got even stranger—Tony said he could stay there forever. At that point, I was honestly shaking. Maybe it was the pregnancy hormones, but the whole thing was really getting to me.
So I picked my son up and carried him, screaming, back to the car. My husband had our 18-month-old, and we got them both strapped into their seats. Then I realized I’d left my purse behind, so I went back to get it. I swear the next part is true, though I understand if it sounds made up.
As I turned to walk back to the car, I noticed a plaque near the park entrance, just below the sign. I suddenly felt like I needed to read it. It was a memorial for a seven-year-old boy who had been hit by a car while riding his bike home from that park sometime in the 1980s.
He didn’t survive, and his name was Anthony. We got back in the car and left as quickly as we could. After that, we only stopped at McDonald’s play areas for the rest of the trip.
32. The Gentlemen Are Coming
When my cousin was little, every Halloween he reacted the exact same way. Out of nowhere he’d start screaming, “The gentlemen are coming to get me!” “The gentlemen are scary!” “They’re all bones! They don’t have skin!” This happened every Halloween for about three years.
My aunt and uncle were understandably confused and pretty alarmed. Then one day they were in a store, and my cousin suddenly started screaming about the gentlemen again. That’s when it finally made sense. He was terrified of skeleton decorations.
For whatever reason, he thought skeletons were called gentlemen. Apparently, at some point he had seen one of those old black-and-white cartoons with dancing skeletons in top hats.
Walt Disney/Ub Iwerks, Wikimedia Commons
33. She Misses Her Star
My three-year-old daughter walked over to me while I was sitting on the couch reading. She leaned against my knee and let out a huge sigh—the kind of sigh that sounded way too deep and heavy for a little kid. I asked her what was wrong.
Her face was turned into my leg, so I looked down at the top of her curly head. Then she looked up at me and said, “I’m tired of this planet. I want to go back to the star where I came from.”
I picked her up, held her close, and said something like, “I know, sweetie… I know.” I never asked her about it again. A few times later on I hinted at it, just enough to give her a chance to bring it up if she wanted to, but she never did.
34. Over-The-Top Empathy
Taking children to get shots is always hard. Now imagine doing it with twins. My mother had come along to help me, and together we took them to the doctor. We decided I would hold the baby getting the jab, and my mother would hold the other one. Then something strange happened.
When the doctor gave the jab to the child in my arms, the one in my mother’s arms was the one who screamed in pain. The look that passed between me, my mom, and the nurse was unforgettable.
35. The Omen Was An Omen
One of my sons, when he was around one year old, used to carry around our DVD copies of both the 1976 and 2006 versions of The Omen. We thought it was creepy enough that we went out of our way to hide them in separate places.
But every time, he would quietly search all over the house until he found them—both of them. Then he’d carry them around again. If we took them away, he cried and threw a fit. It was deeply unsettling.
36. As Easy As C B A
When my son was three, he was picking up the alphabet really fast. One morning he woke up and perfectly started saying it backwards.
I was half asleep and just thought, “Wow, that’s impressive.” Later, after some coffee and once I was fully awake, it hit me that nobody had ever taught him to do that. I just sat there stunned, wondering how a three-year-old could suddenly decide, “Let me try saying it backwards.”
37. Just Say No
I’m not a parent, but I babysit my sister’s daughters all the time. They’re 10 months and two years old. Today, the older one went down for her nap like usual and had been in her room for about 20 minutes.
I was in the living room down the hall with the baby when I started hearing the older sister talking. She sounded scared. She was crying and sniffling a little, but not loudly. I went down the hall, peeked through the door, and saw her standing in her crib, staring across the room and talking softly.
As soon as I opened the door, she started crying hard and saying, “No! Don’t do that!” while pointing across the room. For the next 15 minutes, while I was trying to comfort her, she would suddenly look at different spots in the room, point, and cry.
Finally I asked, “Do you want me to tell them no?” She said yes. So I pointed at random spots around her room and said, “No! No! No!” After that, she was able to lie down and fall back asleep. Now I’m worried I may have started something with the ghosts in my sister’s house.
38. Planetary Return
I was staying at my sister’s house, and my nine-year-old daughter and I were sharing a room. She was already fast asleep in the bed, and I was lying next to her getting ready to fall asleep myself.
I was in that in-between stage where you’re drifting off but still awake. Then suddenly, I heard her say in a very clear, calm voice, like she was fully awake: “It is the return of Saturn.”
My eyes flew open and I turned to look at her. She was still completely asleep, and everyone else in the house was too. I assume it was some kind of auditory hallucination or part of that transition into dreaming, but it definitely gave me chills.
39. Second Coming Of Second Cousin
My daughter was about two and a half at the time. She had started saying, “Hi John!” in her room even though no one was there. I asked, kind of joking, “John who, honey?” She answered, “John G Hanson!” That completely shocked me. It was the name of a cousin of mine who had taken his own life across the country six years earlier.
He was a second cousin, and there’s no reason she would have known his full name. I asked her where John G Hanson was. She walked out into the hallway and pointed toward the stairs.
Not down the stairs, but straight ahead, if that makes sense. We waved and said “Hi” to John, and then I quickly changed the subject.
40. Come See The Lady
This happened almost 20 years ago. My youngest son was about three, I think. It was late on a Friday or Saturday night, and I was still up watching TV while the kids were asleep. My son came out of his room and said, “Dad, come see the lady in my room.”
I was definitely unsettled, but I went with him. We got to his room and no one was there. He just said, “She’s gone now.” I asked where she had been, 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, she used to tie up her doll and hang it from the top bunk bed. You’d walk into her room and there it was—wrapped up in shoelaces, robe ties, or whatever she could find—just hanging there helplessly.
My wife and I would talk to her and explain that it wasn’t okay. She’d say she understood, but then three days later, the doll would be hanging there again.
42. A Treasure Trove
When my son was about 18 months old, he figured out that if he pushed the buttons on the boxes under the TV, all kinds of interesting things would happen. Lights would turn on, trays would slide out, and the machines would make whirring noises.
One day I wanted to play Mass Effect 3, but I couldn’t find the disc anywhere, even though I knew I had left it in the Xbox. Since I’m not exactly the most organized gamer, I checked every game case and then a bunch of DVD cases too.
Nothing. It was just gone. About a month later, I was cleaning up my son’s toys and noticed he had a bunch of random things stored under the seat of this little wooden European car we bought for him to ride around the apartment.
Inside that compartment was my Mass Effect 3 disc, along with all kinds of things my wife and I had been searching for over the past few weeks and months. Apparently, he had pressed the eject button on the Xbox, seen the disc, realized he could grab it, and added it to the rest of his “treasure.”
43. He Greets The Darkness
I’m a parent, but the creepiest thing I’ve experienced actually happened while I was working at a child care center. I work with infants, and we have a sleep room that’s somewhat separated from the play area.
The sleep room was dark because we had gotten it ready for nap time while the children were eating lunch. On this particular day, one of the little boys looked into the darkness, smiled, waved, and said, “Hi!”
I looked into the room, and there was definitely nothing there. He was a very friendly kid, though, and would usually smile, wave, and say “hi” to people walking past.
Still, I asked my co-worker if she would mind putting the kids down for their naps that day, since she hadn’t heard him say it. Yes, I basically offered 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 talked about seeing people who had passed all the time. I had nearly passed myself a couple of times because of food allergies and had to be resuscitated.
My mom told me that one day she rushed me into the hospital completely limp and turning blue around the mouth, screaming, “My baby is dying,” but the doctors were able to revive me. So understandably, it terrified her when I started telling her I saw ghosts.
It got even stranger when my nephew was stillborn. I wasn’t there when he was born, but apparently I told my mom that I had played with him in the sky, and that we jumped from mountaintop to mountaintop and did other unusual things.
I also described him perfectly, including how much hair he had, the color of it, and other features. By that point my mom was really shaken. Then, when I was about four, I apparently woke up one morning and told her that Jesus had come to see me the night before.
I told her we were in a large white room, surrounded by what she believed—based on my description—to be angels. I said Jesus came over to me, lifted me onto his lap, and that I played with his beard and robe while he smiled, laughed, and played with me. Then he kissed me on the cheek and told me he loved me.
She almost had a breakdown because she thought it meant he was about to take me. My siblings back up these stories too. Apparently, I frightened them more than once with this kind of thing.
45. From Under The Bed
My bedroom gets extremely dark at night—so dark I can’t even see my hand in front of my face. One night I woke up to my daughter standing right in front of me, whispering, “Mommy, mommy.” All I could make out was this large shadow when I opened my eyes.
It scared me half to my grave. My sons have done similar things too, but never that close to my face. She also once snuck into our room in the middle of the night and grabbed my foot to wake me up.
It was basically my childhood fear coming true, except the little monster was my own child instead of something living 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 jumped 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 gone!" 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 pass on on the road, you pass on 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.
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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 once took his four-year-old daughter to an old theater in Alaska. The moment she walked in, she started crying, so he brought her outside and she calmed down right away. He took her back in, and she started crying again, so once more he took her outside. When he asked why she was crying, she said, “That’s where the people with no eyes watch you.”
72. Past Lives
My daughter used to talk all the time about another life she had lived. It wasn’t just once or twice either; it went on for years, and she always described it in very specific detail. At first I assumed it was just an elaborate story she had made up, but as it kept happening over and over, and with so much detail, it really started to unsettle me. She had never been through anything like what she described, and we didn’t watch movies with those kinds of themes.
What she said got very unsettling. She would talk about how her dad back then, not her current dad, used to hurt her, lock her in a closet, and make her stand outside with her hands tied to a tree. She said he wasn’t kind, that she had siblings, and that he treated the boy better. According to her, he eventually took the lifes of both her and her mom, and she described what happened to her in a lot of detail.
One day we were driving through Kansas near Dodge City, and while we were on a long empty road, she pointed at a house and said it looked like where she used to live. We had never been there before, and that was actually one of the last things she ever said about it. Hearing her talk about it used to break my heart, and I’m so relieved it finally stopped.
73. Creep In The Corner
When I was three years old, I was sleeping in my parents’ bed when I suddenly sat straight up and asked, “Mommy, who is that man in the corner?” She was terrified. Apparently this happened every night until she finally went to the corner and spoke to him, asking him to leave us alone because he was scaring me. Because of that, I still believe in ghosts.
74. Get The Heck Out
One night my sister was asleep next to me while I was on my phone. She’s a very heavy sleeper, and almost nothing wakes her up. Out of nowhere, she sat straight up and grabbed my arm while staring at the window. I’ll never forget what she said next. In a panicked whisper, she said, “You can’t let them in.” I asked what she meant, completely confused.
“You can’t let them in,” she said again. “They don’t have eyes.” Then she lay back down and went right back to sleep. That would have been creepy enough by itself, but there had been other strange things in my house before and after that. For example, my siblings refused to sleep in their room. Eventually they said it was because of “the girl without eyes who lives in the closet.”
I also had nightmares about a girl with empty black spaces where her eyes should have been, standing at the foot of my bed. In the dream, she told me I had “better wake up before you forget how.” Before I had that nightmare, I kept feeling like my blanket was being pulled off me during the night. I had never told anyone about it, so it wasn’t as if my sister got the idea of the eyeless girl from me.
The window my sister had been staring at also had a strange history. At night I would often 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 onto the roof to check. But the moment I came back inside, my cat would hiss at the window again. Altogether, it was just a deeply unsettling string of events.
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75. That’ll Drive The Property Value Down
We were visiting a family friend’s house, and my oldest son was about three at the time. All the kids were in the children’s room playing together. They started getting loud, so I went in to check on them. They were laughing at the closet, running up to it, then running away again. I assumed they were just playing hide-and-seek or being silly, so I went back to talking with the adults. Then it turned disturbing very quickly.
A few minutes later, another boy came running to me and said my son was climbing into the crawl space through the closet. I ran in and found him with only his feet sticking out. I pulled him back and asked what he was doing, and he told me he was going to find “her” because she had told him to come get her. Apparently, the kids had been interacting with something, or someone, in the crawl space.
He said “she” had been making them laugh from inside the crawl space, that all of them could see her, and that she had told my son to follow her. I told the homeowner what happened, and she said her kids knew better than to open the crawl space door, and the children insisted they hadn’t opened it. But that wasn’t even the strangest part. While brushing it off, the homeowners mentioned that the house had once been a daycare or orphan home in the early 1900s.
Something terrible had happened there back then, and a number of children went missing, which led to the place being shut down. It was an old house near the train tracks in East Texas. All the rooms were connected by doors, and each room had an opening to the crawl space along a long hallway. The whole place felt strange. The homeowners didn’t believe in anything paranormal, but they would still talk about hearing crying, footsteps running down the hall, and books falling off shelves.
76. Pull The Trigger, Piglet
My sister’s older daughter is an absolute angel, but the younger one is seriously troubling. My sister and brother-in-law excuse every wild thing she does. One of the worst incidents happened last year when my sister’s ureter ruptured and she had to have a tube running from her kidney, out of her body, and into a bag while it healed. She was very sick and ended up in the hospital for a little over a month.
Anyway, on the second night after she came home, the younger kid PULLED the tube out of my sister’s kidney, which meant an emergency surgery right away. And her explanation? She KNEW it would hurt her mom, but her mom was getting SO MUCH attention from dad after coming home...attention she thought she deserved more.
The worst part is that my sister and brother-in-law acted like it was cute. What’s even stranger is that my older niece would never have been allowed to get away with something like that, so I honestly don’t understand why they’ve spoiled the younger one so much. I know she’s my niece, but I really struggle to look past behavior like that and feel any warmth toward her...and she’s only six years old.
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77. Been Here Before
My son was three when he visited his grandmother, who lived a few states away. It was his first time at her house, but as soon as he went inside, he toddled over to her, put his little hand on her cheek, and said, “I’ve missed you so much, Annie.” Then he climbed into her lap, patted her hand, and told her he had liked her black hair better.
My grandmother, Ann, had stopped dyeing her hair and let it turn white a few years earlier. And no one except my grandfather ever called her Annie. Later, my son walked past a photo of my grandfather in his old band, stopped, pointed right at him, and said, “That’s when I was playing in the band.”
At three years old, my son knew almost nothing about my grandfather except that he had passed on. I also didn’t have any photos of my grandfather as a young man anywhere in our house.
78. Twice Too Much
When my daughter was still in a booster seat, she sat at the end of the table near the railing by the basement stairs. Every now and then she would get really squirmy and upset. Before she could talk clearly, I didn’t think much of it. Then one day she told me she didn’t like it when the man tickled her while she was eating at the table...what?
I asked if he scared her. She said no. She just didn’t like him bothering her. Fast forward four years, and now my son is that age and sitting in the same chair. I could not believe it. Same squirming. Same frustration. AND HE TOLD ME THE EXACT SAME THING!!!! He didn’t like the man bothering him!!!! We don’t live there anymore.
79. It’s All Gone
When I was about four, I used to stare out the window at night toward my grandparents’ house. One night my mom asked why I kept looking over there. I told her I remembered that being my room. When she asked what I meant, I just said, “Why did they knock down that wall?” My great-grandfather had lived in the room I was pointing at.
After he passed on a year before I was born, my grandfather tore down a wall and turned it into a sunroom. My mom didn’t know that, and neither did my dad. So when my mom casually mentioned what I’d said to my grandparents, my grandfather was completely stunned. A year later, when I was five, I stayed with them for the summer.
While I was picking strawberries with my grandmother, I asked where the shed had gone and whether we were standing where they used to keep the pigs. My great-grandfather had become too old to care for the pigs, and the shed had been torn down after a tree limb hit it during a tornado. All of that happened before I was born. There’s no way I should have known any of it.
80. A Wild Goose Chase
I didn’t hear this myself, 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 told her grandmother, “The geese won’t hurt me anymore, they’re sleeping.” What had actually happened was horrifying.
It turned out she had offed them all with a large stick. She was six years old.
81. Technically There
One night, I had a nightmare that my family and I were at the beach with my mom’s brother and his wife. My dad vanished, and then a huge thunderstorm rolled in. We ran and took shelter under a pavilion until it passed. In the dream, lightning was striking all around us and fires were breaking out. I even thought some people were being hit by lightning.
I remember feeling really scared that my dad wasn’t coming back. When I woke up, I learned it hadn’t been just a dream—it was actually a memory. We really had gone to the beach with my mom’s brother and his wife, and there really was a storm. My dad had gone to the car, but the storm hit, so he stayed there because he was farther away.
It was an incredibly intense storm that came out of nowhere. A nearby shop was struck and caught fire, so fire trucks showed up. No one was actually hit by lightning, though—that part came from my imagination. My mom had even recorded some of it, and I had never seen the video before because it had been packed away.
The strangest part is that my mom was pregnant with me at the time. But somehow, I had this unsettling “memory dream” about something that really happened. I barely remembered the dream the next morning, but when I told my dad about it, he said it sounded oddly familiar and found the video to show me.
82. Downward Dog
Just before my daughter turned five, she was standing in the hallway in the middle of the night, still asleep, whimpering and crying. After gently calming her down, I brought her to lie next to me. When I asked what she had dreamed about, she got really upset. She told me she remembered being a bad dog, and that they made her go to sleep.
I asked her about it again later, and she became very upset. She said she was a bad dog and started crying, saying she didn’t want to remember it again. She had no idea what it meant to put a dog down, let alone that people might say it happens to “bad dogs.”
83. Making Light Of It
My little brother and I shared a room while we were growing up. One night, I walked in at bedtime. I had school the next morning and was exhausted. For some reason, the lights were still on. My little brother, who was probably six or seven at the time, was asleep on the top bunk. I flipped the light switch and started settling into the bottom bunk.
Just as I was about to lie down, I heard, “Turn the light back on.” I stood up and looked toward him. “What?” I asked. “Turn the light back on.” I switched the light back on. He was sitting up, eyes wide open, staring at nothing. He was sleep-talking. I asked, “Why do you want the light on?” He said, “Because... I was born in the light.” Then he slowly lay back down, closed his eyes, and went right back to sleep.
84. Das Creep
My son was terrified of his bedroom. He said the “snake-neck lady” wanted to “hurt Mommy so she can be my mommy, but she scares me and I don’t want her to be my mommy!” And as if that wasn’t creepy enough, the snake-neck lady didn’t walk. She would only “fly back and forth all the time.” It gets worse: she couldn’t leave his room because her “snake neck is attached to ceiling.”
Around that same time, my child also suddenly started speaking German. I don’t speak German, and no one in our extended family does either. But my toddler had a very intense German vocabulary. I was horrified when I found out what some of the words meant. He only used German when he was upset, frustrated, or angry. He didn’t go to daycare or have a babysitter.
He was only ever with me, his dad, or my parents. So where in the world did he learn to angrily speak German? I love my son more than anything, but kids can be seriously unsettling sometimes.
85. Little Relief
I had a miscarriage at 19. It was one of the most painful times in my life. I was far enough along to know the baby was going to be a girl, and afterward I had nightmares about the daughter I lost. Years later, a toddler came running into my arms and told me she was really good friends with Naomi, who was completely fine and sorry for not being ready.
It terrified me because I had never told anyone the name I was planning to give my daughter. Her parents told me there was no one at her daycare named Naomi and assumed it must have been an imaginary friend.
86. Wise Beyond His Years
My three-year-old son casually told me one morning after brushing his teeth, “When I was an old man, I smoked. And there was a fire.” A few months later, while getting dressed, he suddenly said, “You’re a baby, then you’re old, then you’re a baby again. Like a circle,” and then traced a circle in the air with his finger. I still get chills when I think about those conversations.
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87. The Ghost Knows
I was sitting on a bench in a cemetery. I’d just had an argument with my girlfriend at the time, and I was staring at the ground when I noticed someone standing in front of me. I looked up, and there was a little girl, maybe seven or eight years old. She looked at me and said, “Where is your beautiful wife?” I think I replied, “I don’t have one,” then looked back down.
A second later, I looked up again because I figured I probably didn’t want to seem like some strange adult talking to a kid in a cemetery, but she was gone, like she had vanished. I looked around, and there was no one anywhere nearby, even though we were well away from the exits. Very strange, and I never forgot it—but there was one last twist. I eventually broke up with that girlfriend, but 15 years later we met again and got married.
88. Say My Name
We used to joke that our first child looked just like my grandmother, who had passed on almost exactly a year before she was born. Then again, all babies kind of looked like my grandmother—no teeth, big puffy cheeks—so we didn’t think much of it. But one night, when my daughter was less than a year old, she was really upset.
She would not settle down no matter what I tried. At one point, exhausted, I said out loud 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. I have never felt chills like that in my life.
89. It’s Coming From Inside The House
When I was little, maybe five or six, I used to stay with my grandma for family reasons. Her house was old, I think—I’ve never looked into its history, and honestly, I don’t want to—but my little brother and I were always terrified of being alone in the backyard at night. It felt like someone was watching us. We also had a chicken coop in the corner, and one night the chickens simply disappeared.
Just gone. The cage was torn up, but no one knew what had happened to them. My brother also used to say he could hear babies crying outside at night and that someone was under the bed waiting to get him. I also remember him saying someone was banging on the window while he was taking a bath, but when we checked, nobody was there. I don’t know—that house was incredibly creepy.
90. Didn’t See You There
I used to do short-term foster care. At one point, I was caring for a pair of brothers, and I was sitting alone with one of them, who was eight years old. He stared off into the distance and, in a completely casual tone with no emotion at all, described how he was going to hurt his brother and smother my partner in her sleep. He talked about it for about 10 minutes before finally looking at me and asking how long I had been sitting there.
91. A Family Affair
My three-year-old niece used to tell us about conversations she had with relatives who had passed. Two of them had passed before she was born, and the third passed before she turned one. Somehow, she could recognize them in photos without any prompting, repeat the nicknames my sister and I used for them as kids, and share details that were accurate and that she really shouldn’t have known.
Hanka: He passed in 2015. She called him Mr. ******, using his last name rather than hers. She said he wore a suit and walked around with his hands behind his back. That was exactly how he was—he wore a suit every day even after retiring, and he often walked with his hands behind his back. He had met her a few times when she was a baby, but by then he was bedridden, couldn’t walk, and only wore pajamas during the few visits they had.
Gran: She passed in 2012. My niece didn’t say her name, but she picked her out in photos. She told us Gran wanted to make sure she grew up “proper and courteous.” That fit perfectly—my grandmother cared a lot about etiquette and made all of her grandkids study an etiquette book when we were young.
Poppy: He passed in 1991. She knew his name and recognized him in pictures. She said he was funny, which matched his reputation for pulling pranks, and that one of his fingers was shorter than the others. He had actually lost half of his right index finger while fixing a lawnmower in the 1970s.
92. The Burden Of Dreams
When I was a teenager, I sometimes babysat a teacher’s child because their family was friends with mine. The kid was very anxious and often talked about upsetting dreams. They weren’t exactly violent, but they had disturbing little details—like mold growing out of people’s faces. She also talked about a “rat man” she saw in the corner of her room.
Whenever she described those things, I would get a really bad feeling in my gut.
93. Special In A Creepy Way
A couple of weeks ago, I was babysitting my four-year-old cousin, who I had never met before. She walked up to me and said, “Did you know I strangled my hamster? His name is Fred. He’s sitting on my shoulder right now, but nobody else can see him. It was funny watching the life leave his eyes.”
I honestly didn’t know how to respond, so I just said, “Can you tell me more about Fred?”
I was completely rattled, but I love that little girl and didn’t want to upset her. Later that night, she started talking about how graveyards are scary because she usually sees old people floating around. I just nodded along, but I honestly think there’s something unusual about her. I’m babysitting her again in a few days, and I’m planning to ask more about it. Poor kid must see a lot of things she doesn’t want to.
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94. The Risk He Took Was Calculated
I teach circus skills, and one day a kid who had no trouble doing the warm-up move suddenly fell off his apparatus, screaming and crying. Since we were doing something dangerous, the facility treated it like a serious injury right away, because it genuinely could have been a broken arm. After he went home, I watched the security footage.
The kid looked over at me to make sure I wasn’t watching, then let go and dropped on purpose. I was completely confused. Later, his mom called to tell us he had been pretending to be hurt because he thought if he got badly injured, he’d get to see his dad. The whole thing went from strange and terrifying to heartbreaking and terrifying.
95. Always Planning Ahead
I asked my seven-year-old cousin if she was excited about my sister having a baby. At first, she seemed a little sad because she wouldn’t be the youngest in the family anymore. Then, a moment later, she brightened up and said, “Oh! That’s good, because if they’re younger than me, then I won’t be left alone when Nathan passes on.”
Nathan is her 12-year-old brother.
96. I'd Rather You Didn't
A few days ago, my six-year-old daughter was sitting in the passenger seat when she 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 getting really upset at bedtime about the “parents” who would visit her at night. It turned into intense nightmares and night terrors, and honestly, it was pretty unsettling.
We asked her all kinds of questions, like, “Are the parents us?” and “Do you mean your friend’s parents?” You never know if something concerning is going on. But every time, her answer was no. They were just “the parents.”
A few weeks later, my wife was driving with our daughter when she suddenly panicked and shouted, “Mom, look, it’s the parents!” That’s when we finally figured it out. My wife followed her gaze and saw a group of scarecrows.
Somehow, my daughter thought scarecrows were called “parents,” and of course they already look creepy. It was also Halloween season, so she was absolutely terrified of them.
98. The Others
My mom and older sister still talk about how I used to randomly burst into tears and ask where my mom was, even when she was standing right in front of me. When she tried to comfort me by saying she was there, I would cry out for my other mom instead. Then I’d describe this person, who apparently was always holding a bloody hammer. They said it frightened them badly, but one day when I was two, they tried asking me about it again and I didn’t remember any of it.
99. Angry, Red Eyes
My son was almost three when he called me into his room about five minutes after I’d put him to bed. I asked what was wrong, and he said, “I’m scared.” So I asked what he was afraid of. His answer honestly shook me.
He said, “I’m scared of the old lady with the angry, red eyes!” It scared me too, but I assumed he’d seen something on TV or on his iPad. Trying to comfort him, I leaned over his little bed in the corner and asked where he had seen this old lady with the angry, red eyes.
He said, “She’s standing right behind you.” I froze and turned around slowly. Luckily, there was nothing there. I kissed him goodnight and left, but I kept the door halfway open.
100. The Man In The Corner
One night, the girl I nanny for woke up screaming—really screaming. I knew right away something was wrong, but I never expected what happened next. When I went into her room, she was curled into a ball against her crib, almost like she was trying to push or fight something away. I picked her up, and she hit me in the face. I held her head gently and calmly said her name, but her eyes looked wild.
After a little while, she came back to herself, hugged me, and shook in my arms. The next morning, I asked what had happened.
“The man was here,” she said.
I asked where, and she immediately pointed to a corner of the room. Then I asked what he looked like. She pointed to her skin and said, “Black,” then made circles around her eyes with her hands, like goggles or binoculars, and said, “Red.”
It never happened again exactly like that, but other strange things have. I’m convinced she either sees things or has some kind of sleep paralysis. But sleep paralysis usually doesn’t involve moving around or trying to run away. She’s a spooky little kid.
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