Kids have wild imaginations, and it’s normal for them to create imaginary friends. But what happens if there’s nothing normal about what they envision? Even worse, what if their imaginary friends turn out not to be so “imaginary” after all? Prepare for nightmare fuel as these Redditors share their creepy experiences…and maybe don’t read these alone at night.
1. This Is The Stuff Of Horror Movies
Okay, so this is kinda creepy. I'm an adult who doesn’t believe in ghosts and such, but then I think of this experience and wonder what the heck is wrong with me for being so stupid. I'd hardly call it an imaginary “friend,” but when I was around 12, I lived with my brother and his family. We moved to a new home, and one of my nieces, who was about four or five, would always avoid certain corners of the house because she was scared of “the green lady".
The green lady was pretty much always located in the same corner in the family room, but on a couple of occasions, she'd move. So, my older niece, who was about nine at the time, would pick on her little sister and throw her toys in that corner. My little niece would avoid it like the plague. Then one day, her big sister PUSHED her in that corner.
I swear, NEVER in my life had I ever heard such a blood-curdling scream. Never again have I yet, and I hope never to hear that kind of scream again. She didn't even run away from the corner. She was backed into it, looking upwards in terror. Her fear had us all scared, I think. My older niece never messed with her little sister about that corner again.
Actually, none of us really screwed around with that corner again. Friends thought we were joking when they'd come over, and we'd casually say, “Oh, annnd stay away from that corner because we're pretty sure an evil ghost lives there".
So, when did the green lady finally move from the corner? Here's the messed-up part: according to my niece, when my brother and his wife discussed moving out of the house, the green lady did not like that, so at bedtime, she followed them into their room. The other time, the green lady got mad again after my sister-in-law got pregnant, so she moved to the nursery and stayed in there.
During the time we lived there, which was for about two and a half years, all sorts of things went really wrong. My sister-in-law lost one of the twins she was carrying. The surviving twin was born with spinal meningitis and all kinds of problems; it was at least a month before the baby got to come home. Then my sister-in-law developed cervical cancer.
Later, my sister-in-law’s mom, who uses a walker, fell in the freaking pool and injured herself. Plus, we couldn't keep pets alive anymore. We had a golden retriever, a cocker spaniel, a cat, a couple of pet rats, and a guinea pig. The dogs got sick with pancreatic cancer, and tumors grew on their sides. Our cat got ran over, and the guinea got sick.
The rats were fine until my sister-in-law’s mom forgot to take the towel cover off the cage on a hot day, and the heat cooked my niece's rat. Eventually, we finally moved the heck out. But even after all this time, we all agree that something was wrong with that place and that whatever that green witch was, she was freaking evil and the probable cause of what made so many horrible things go wrong while we lived there.
2. Hot Air
My daughter had two imaginary friends when she was about eight. The first one's name was Lucy. Apparently, Lucy had asthma, and one day we were driving in the car with the windows down. It was summer, and the AC wasn't working, so it was pretty hot. My daughter was sitting in the front seat, and she said Lucy was sitting on the floor between her legs.
Suddenly, my daughter began screaming and crying as Lucy suffered an asthma attack, and tragically, the extreme heat led to her losing her life. She later got a replacement friend. Her name was Keeshe, and according to my daughter, she was Japanese and Jamaican. Well, Keeshe was mean, and she used to bite people, so my daughter said she had to “get rid of her".
Whatever that meant.
3. Dun-Dun-Donnn
When my daughter was a toddler, she randomly started talking about a man named Don. She always described him the same way and didn’t seem scared of him at all, despite bringing him up every day. She didn’t go to daycare, and we didn’t know anyone named Don. Then one day, she got completely freaked out—she wouldn’t walk around the house alone in case she ran into Don.
She also wouldn’t sleep in her own room, and she would talk about how much she hated him because he said “mean words” to her all the time. About a year into “mean Don,” we bought a new house. Once we moved, she never spoke of him again.
4. That’s Quackers
My son had this imaginary friend called Ganga. She lived in the nearby pond, had duck feet, hair all over her face, and ate through a slit in her neck. Apparently, we were expecting her any minute for dinner. He was totally chill with this horrific monster idea, yet he had recurring nightmares about a puppy coming into his room.
Kids are weird.
5. Falling To Pieces
My youngest niece had an imaginary friend. After my sister told me about it, she said to me, “Ask her what she looks like". So, I turned to my niece and asked, "Okay, what does she look like?” My niece answered, “Broken pieces". What? A little unnerved, I paused for a moment before replying, "Oh…Why is she broken, sweetie?" My niece looked at me: “She fell from our tree".
Nope. Sorry sis, you're on your own.
6. Something’s Wrong With This Picture…
When my cousin and I were kids, she casually mentioned she had a "friend named Harold who lived in the picture frames". Several picture frames lined the entire hallway of my cousin’s house, and she would always hold her breath when she walked by them. Anyway, one day we were hanging out in her unfinished basement, and she pointed to a beam in the far back corner.
She stated very bluntly, “That's where Harold sleeps".
7. Afterlife Partners
When my son was around three or four, he started talking about his wife. He would say she was outside and very sad. I remember him putting his hand on his heart and saying he missed her, but we couldn’t let her in because she needed to move on.
8. Heard, But Not Seen
My cousin was a few years younger than me, and he had an imaginary friend called “Mooky". Mooky wasn't human, but some kind of alien/monster thing. It used to freak me out when I'd hear a noise behind me at my grandparents' house, and my cousin would calmly say, “It's only Mooky; he just wants to see you".
9. When Things Go Bump In The Night
I used to sleep in my brother's room because I would have weird vibes if I slept alone; my foot would get pushed while falling asleep, or my bed would slightly rock back and forth. I just had an all-around feeling of discomfort from feeling watched. Well, during one of these nights, my brother swore up and down that he witnessed a “little alien” with big eyes around me while I was sleeping.
I don't even know, man. Things were weird growing up. We should have checked the gas levels.
10. Never Home Alone
I used to talk to a boy named Kevin when I was a child. He came to visit me at my window every night, and we would play in my bedroom. Sometimes he stayed in my house, too, instead of going back out the window. I very thoroughly described him to my parents before I grew up and no longer saw him. But I never forgot Kevin.
While I still lived in that house, my older niece asked us who the little boy in the hall was. She was the only child present. The hall was about a three-foot space between my old bedroom and my brother's old bedroom and the bathroom. It was one space with three doorways—but she was looking right into my room.
Then, my brother and his family moved into our childhood home a few years back. Within the first month or so of living in my old bedroom, my three-year-old niece described Kevin to my brother exactly. To a tee. We've never told her, or any of the other kids, about Kevin.
11. The Starry-Eyed Girl
This was definitely weird. When I was little, I claimed to have an imaginary friend who had light brown hair, wore a nightgown, and had stars for eyes. Well, while my young niece was living at my old childhood home, she told me that she made a new friend who missed me. Apparently, this friend kept asking her why I went away.
So, I asked my niece about her “friend". Eerily, she then perfectly described my old imaginary friend. It was super spooky.
12. All In The Family
My mother told me that when I was younger, she heard me talking to someone. She thought I was alone, so she came to investigate. When she saw nobody there with me, she asked me who I was talking to. When I answered, she went white as a sheet. Apparently, I perfectly described my late grandmother (fair enough, she passed when I was young) and my mother's grandmother—including her name. I’d never met or even seen a photo of her.
She was supremely spooked out.
13. Cover The Mirrors
I had an imaginary friend as a kid, and his name was Ricky. He lived in the mirrors and wouldn’t let me change. I vividly remember saying something along the lines of, “Ricky, please don’t watch me while I’m changing,” and “Ricky, go to a different mirror. I have to take a bath". I imagined a friend who wouldn’t give me privacy. Like, what?
14. Dark Secrets
My son had an imaginary friend he called “Dark". He was only three at the time. He would say, “Hear it? See it?” We would ask him what he was talking about, and he would say, “Dark". There was only one room in our house he would say this in, and it was in our basement. He also said that Dark didn’t like it when my son would tell us about him.
We got the house blessed after my son told us that Dark had a dog, and the dog's name was “Keeper". After the blessing, he never talked about Dark or Keeper again.
15. Oh, Boy…
So, I lived in a very old house in a predominately Hispanic neighborhood with my three little sisters, and according to my mom, we each had an imaginary friend called “The Little Brown Boy". I was the first one to see him, then my sister, and then my other sister. But we had all forgotten about him by the time the next little sister saw him.
“The Little Brown Boy” would apparently be super nice to us at first, and we would play with him; then, out of nowhere, we would be absolutely terrified of him and not want to go to our room where he lived. We were all about four years old when we saw him. We moved out a few years later, and apparently, the people who moved into the house after we left said that their little daughter made an imaginary friend shortly afterward.
She called him the mean boy.
16. Soul Train
My son stopped talking to his imaginary friend for months after my 15-year-old nephew took his own life. My son, who was not quite five, was the apple of his eye. My nephew treated my son like a little brother, and since his mom watched my son while I worked, they spent tons of time together. I had simply told my son that his cousin was sick from sadness and that he’d passed.
I would remind him of this every time before we went to their house so he wouldn’t pester my sister about where his cousin was. One day he said, “Mom, you keep saying he’s not here anymore, but he IS. He sits on my bed before I go to sleep and talks to me". I could NOT dissuade him. This went on for months. He somehow knew things that we never spoke about around him.
Then, my nephew’s grandpa on his dad’s side passed a few months later. That’s when my son told me that his cousin told him that he wouldn’t be able to visit anymore; my nephew was going on a train with his grandpa, and they couldn’t come back again. The last thing my nephew told my son was to never play with guns because they weren’t safe.
My nephew took his life with a handgun. It wigged me the heck out.
17. Monkeying Around
My son always had a bunch of imaginary friends. The most frequently mentioned were Monkey Boy and the cowboy. When my son was two, he woke up one night screaming. I ran to his room, and he was terrified. He kept pointing at the corner and saying that Monkey Boy was bad. I ended up picking my son up and putting him in my bed to sleep with me.
He was three when the next incident occurred. We took a walk with his younger sister in the stroller. I was pushing the stroller, and he was walking just behind me. He kept saying, “Owww, stop it,” or “Please stop!” I kept looking behind me at him, and I saw nothing. Finally, I stopped and asked him what was hurting him. He answered, “The cowboy is hurting me, mommy".
I told him that there was no cowboy near us. His response? “Yes, there is. It’s the cowboy in my head". Kids are creepy sometimes.
18. Abnormal Behavior
When I was seven or eight months pregnant with my third child, my second son, age three, had an imaginary friend named Greyson. His behavior had gotten so out of control that I would ask his grandparents to take him to help me out every so often. One day I was in the kitchen, and he was in his room. I was talking to a friend about how difficult he’d suddenly become.
She suggested a therapist, and I felt a little offended. But then, right after I’d disagreed with her, he walked up to me and said, “Greyson told me that I should stab you". Then he smiled this uber-creepy smile. My skin crawled. We finally moved, and the behavior seemed to stop. He is now 12 and doesn’t remember any of it and is very normal.
19. Seriously, WHY Even Go Inside!?
My friend's then-eight-year-old brother used to visit his friend after school. For months, he would come home around two or three hours after classes. The school was only a 10-minute walk from their house, so he rarely got picked up, especially since he was a very smart kid. Then one day, his dad went to pick him up from school so they could go to the mall, only to learn that all the kids had already left.
Officers advised the family to wait until dinnertime before reporting him missing because he might have just gone to a classmate’s house. Sure enough, the kid came home as usual around two to three hours after school. When his parents asked him where he went, he replied, “I went to see my friend, (let's call him) Jaime". So, they asked him to take them to the friend's house, and he led them nearly an hour's walk away to an old, abandoned hospital.
They went inside, and he showed them a tiny wooden house about 16 square feet at the backside. He said his friend lived there. The house had no sign of anyone living there recently; it had cobwebs and dust everywhere. Needless to say, the boy was never allowed to go home by himself again.
20. This Is Scary And Sad
My daughter started having an imaginary friend named Riley shortly after we moved into an apartment. It was all cute until she told me he passed because his mommy was a bad person. A few months later, I met an upstairs neighbor who informed me that a few tenants ago, there was a lady who caused her son, Riley, to lose his life. I had chills.
21. Fish Out Of Water
When I was little, I had an imaginary friend named Abba Gabba. Abba Gabba was a fish-boy who had once been just a fish until he met his untimely demise when his owner accidentally dropped his tank. I don’t remember much about Abba Gabba, but I do know that he had these weird sorta sunken black eyes and red and blue skin, along with these long gills that extended down about fifteen-ish feet off of his face. He also had kinda sharp teeth and a long blue tongue.
For some reason, he liked finding curly hair because his owner had curly hair before he turned six years old. Coincidentally, six was also Abba Gabba's favorite number. I told my dad about Abba Gabba one day, and he went all pale. Apparently, my dad had a fish named Abba Gabba that passed when he dropped his tank on his eighth birthday. My dad also had curly hair up until he was six.
It freaks me out to think about it now.
22. Attics Are Creepy
My bedroom was in the attic of my family’s house. When my brother was four, he told me about the man who lived in the attic; apparently, he would hear someone walking around in the attic when I wasn't in there. My brother also said he'd seen someone's head poking out of the hatch watching him at night and that he was sorry he'd been too scared to do anything about the man in my bedroom. It scared the heck out of me—but that was just the beginning.
If that wasn't bad enough, one day, I was hanging out in his room when he went quiet out of nowhere. When I asked what was wrong, he said, “He's back,” and I swear to God, I heard footsteps coming from the attic. I no longer live with them. Once while I was talking to the same brother (now aged 10) about him taking the bigger attic bedroom now that it was empty, my youngest brother, who was five, immediately asked, “But where will the man live?”
23. The Lap Child
My mom used to tell me the story about my imaginary friend. To start, my mom used to come to check on me in the morning, and things would have been placed into my cot that baby me would have had no way of reaching to put them in myself. Then as I got older—maybe five years old—I complained of someone knocking on my bedroom door each night.
Then came the story of my imaginary friend, a little girl that I would play with. My mom asked me to describe her, and I said she wore a long dress, had blonde ringlet hair, and her eyes were rolled back into her head. Cut to a freaked-out mom! She tried not to bring it up too much anymore because she didn't want to encourage this “friend” to stick around.
But a few months later, we were sitting in the front room when I started to cry. My mom asked me what was wrong, and I told her that my friend was sitting on her lap and that it wasn't fair because I wanted to sit on her lap instead. She never forgave me for the mini heart attack that gave her. Eventually, as the years went by, I lost all recollection of my “friend,” but my mom would tell me the story every so often.
24. The Grandfather Paradox
I don't know if this would be considered an “imaginary friend,” but this happened when I was somewhere around four to six years old. It was a couple of months after my grandfather passed from lung cancer (he used to smoke), and we were living at my grandmother's house at the time. One day, I was on the couch, and my grandmother was talking about her wedding to my grandfather.
I ended up saying, “I was at your wedding.".. My family then explained to me that I couldn’t have been there. What was weird, though, was that my grandmother questioned me about the wedding, and I answered every question about the marriage correctly. Around that same time, my mother overheard me talking to myself, so she walked over and asked who I was talking to. My mother told me I responded with, “I'm talking to Pap-Pap".
A couple of months after these events, they re-asked me if I remembered talking to my grandfather, but apparently, I forgot everything. However, I do remember one thing that’s forever in my mind: When I was eight, I was getting ready for school while my grandma was still asleep, and I saw a white figure in the same shape as my grandfather walk into the bathroom.
That was the last time I saw or talked to him.
25. Problem Child
When I was a child, all of my imaginary friends were terrifying. Sometimes horror enthusiasts are born, not made—I was a morbid kid. I can't imagine how my mom felt hearing about this crew regularly from her six-year-old: Daphne was my twin sister who “passed” at birth, but she didn't really die; instead, she crawled out of my mother's womb and went down the street to our house, where she lived in a hole under my bed.
Daphne wasn't human, so she wasn't allowed to live like a human. She was polite but manipulative, and I warned people not to trust her. She could also possess me, and we would “trade bodies". Just so we’re clear: my mom never lost a child, so this wasn't a weird way for me to work through my grief or anything like that.
Another of my imaginary friends, Anna, was a girl who lived in the mirror dimension, and she badly wanted to get out. Making eye contact with her by looking at my own reflection when she was in the wrong mood could allow her to take possession of my body and leave me trapped in the mirror dimension in her place.
I also insisted there was a mummified child who was slain and buried under the floorboards in my bedroom closet, and she was friends with the ghost of another slain child who kept her company.
26. I’m Not Crying; You’re Crying
My eldest child told me that his imaginary friend misses me and wishes she could have been with me longer than a month. A year before I had him, I lost his big sister to SIDS a month after giving birth to her.
27. Sometimes The Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction
When I was little, it was pretty firmly established that I had an imaginary friend named “Other". Other had the same name as me, so I just called him Other. I would tell my mom that Other was being mean to me and wanted to take Dad's bike. I also remember telling my father that Other was very mad at him for hurting me (he was an abusive piece of work), and my dad literally threw me across the room.
I asked my mom about it as an adult, and I finally learned the strange truth: She told me that my father had a brother whom I was named after but wasn't told about because shortly before I was born, he passed in a motorcycle accident.
28. Dance Like No One Has A Face
When I was younger (maybe three or four years old), my mum told me that I kept laughing and looking out the window into the front yard. When she asked me what I was laughing at, my answer was bone-chilling. I flat out said to her, “The people dancing outside with no faces". Mum said she just kept looking ahead at the TV and acted as if she had never asked.
29. This Is Horrible
When I was six, I had a friend who was a little younger than me, and her imaginary friend was not a very nice person. She used to tell me how her imaginary friend, “Mr. G,” made her “hurt between her legs” and how he “tasted funny and made funny noises". She was absolutely terrified of him. She told me Mr. G was very, very tall, with no hair and very mean eyes.
After a few sleepovers, my mom wouldn't let me have sleepovers at her house anymore, and then my friend and her mom moved away. Her father didn't go with them. He was a very tall man with no hair and mean eyes.
30. He Was With Them In Spirit
So, this is actually my story from when I was a kid. I had an imaginary friend named Derek, who was a carbon copy of me. We were completely identical in every way. I played with Derek for years—longer than what normal kids do. But he would always look at my mom and older sister with a sense of sadness. Eventually, he went away.
Twenty-three years later, I'm rummaging through my mom's safe to fetch some documents she stored for me, and I find a certificate for a stillborn boy named Derek who had the same birthday as me. It was only then that I found out I was actually a twin, and my twin, Derek, passed during birth. Creepy, right?
31. Nope, Nope, Nope
My sister Ashley would receive nightly visits from a girl with long dark hair and spider hands, who was no longer living. She moved out the second she turned 18 and never looked back. 20-odd years later, our half-brother Trevor moved into her old room. It wasn't long after that Trev started sleeping on the sofa, or with the lights on, and told us about his new “friend” that he didn't like. She was a girl, no longer living, with long dark hair, an old nightgown, and spider hands.
Needless to say, none of us offered to trade rooms with him.
32. A Grave Encounter
So, my son had an imaginary friend named "Bored" (or maybe “Board”). I can only ever imagine my son asking his name and the “friend” saying, “I'm bored". Anyway, he met him after we moved into an older house. This friend was unnerving at best; he had “mean cats” and lived in the wall. Sometimes my son would like Bored; other times, he would tell us he was mad at Bored because he was being mean and not letting him sleep.
Sometimes Bored would also lock the door to his room and let no one in or out. It was freaky stuff. But for the most part, my son liked playing outside with him—except for when Bored would try to get him to play in the road. Fast-forward sometime later, we were walking past the cemetery by our house, and my son walked in there, pointed to a circle of at least five eight-foot-tall trees, and said, “That's where Bored is from".
I looked in between those trees, and low and behold, a gravestone was inside. These trees and vines absolutely covered it, but it was still just barely visible. We moved soon afterward. Bored did not follow.
33. Playing With Fire
A family friend of mine (a single mother) and her young, three or four-year-old daughter fell on hard times and moved to a cheaper apartment downtown. Her daughter developed an imaginary friend that she claimed was a little girl who visited her “through a door in the wall” at night. Some behavioral problems quickly ensued.
Her daughter was not sleeping; she complained her “friend” was mean to her and wouldn’t let her sleep after saying that she didn’t want to play anymore. Then the daughter started acting out, and her mother became concerned after noticing she’d ripped-off her Barbie doll heads and blacked-out the eyes and mouths with sharpies. It was so freaky—but it was about to get even worse.
The last straw was when her mother found BURNED pieces of doll clothing and hair in her daughter's bedroom. The daughter kept blaming her imaginary friend, and she relayed some disturbing tales of how the imaginary friend wanted to play with fire and had burned the clothes. Her daughter stated she was afraid of the friend, who wanted the daughter to become her “forever friend".
Needless to say, the poor mother was terrified, and she confided this to another friend/neighbor. Through this neighbor, she learned the shocking truth: Their apartment was remodeled following a tragic accident where an entire family perished in a fire—including a young girl approximately the same age as her daughter.
They noped the heck out of there, and once they left, the daughter resumed being her usual happy-go-lucky self. She doesn’t even remember this imaginary friend.
34. Welp...As You Were…
My son, then about two or three years old, used to tell us about his imaginary friend Johnny, who wore all green clothing, including a green hat. One time, we were driving by the cemetery, and my son pointed out the window and exclaimed, “That’s where Johnny lives". He was very little and didn’t yet know what a cemetery was, so we explained to him that no one lived there; it’s a place for people who have passed on.
That’s when he told us that “Johnny was a soldier who passed in a place called Nam".
35. Was It Beyond Their Ken, Or Ken From Beyond?
This story definitely freaked me out a bit. My then three to four-year-old daughter came out of her room at my mum's one day and asked if “Grandpa Ken” could have a sleepover in her room because he was tired of being in the dark. She then went to the spot that my mum kept his ashes and took his brick into her room. She would play with his ashes and have conversations with him regularly.
Initially, this didn’t seem that odd. Then one day, while we were out shopping, she went up to an old man and had a chat with him—she kept calling him “Sonny” and said she was “glad he could breathe again". The old man was nice about it, and he entertained her. When she eventually walked away, my mum spoke with the old fella, and he told her the things my kid had said.
This man looked just like my grandfather, whose nickname was Sonny. My grandpa Ken passed from anaphylactic shock from a bee sting before I was born (about 27 years before all this started). We had no pictures of him, my mum never discussed him, and no one but her knew of his nickname. About a year later, my daughter said that Grandpa Ken told her he had to go be with his wife and that now he knew his girls were safe, he wouldn’t be back.
She’s never brought him up since.
36. Little Ghost Children
My baby cousin and her family moved into a new apartment in the Middle East. According to her mom, her daughter would often go out to the balcony and play with…someone. She would talk, run around, laugh, etc. When her mom asked who she was talking to, she said it was her new friend. Naturally, her mom got concerned and told her to stop playing there.
Later, the dad started feeling like a child would come to sit on his lap whenever he sat on the couch. He could feel the weight and warmth of a child, but of course, there was nothing there. If I remember correctly, they would also hear kids’ voices, and stuff would randomly disappear, too. They moved again shortly after.
37. He Was Just Hanging Around
My cousin had a friend called Monkey Man. My auntie asked him why he called his friend that, and my cousin said it was because he just hung in the corner of the room, which freaked her out. He would always wave at the window as they left the house and say Monkey Man was hanging at the window. Long story short, she did some research and discovered the houses in that neighborhood got built over mine shafts, where taking your own life was common.
I still feel like someone’s watching every time I walk past.
38. She Got Real
So, this was very weird. When I was like five, I had this imaginary friend called Ala (short for Alena). I forgot about her, and when I went to school, I had this classmate who looked and acted exactly like her. Guess freaking what? Her name was Alena. She was identical to my imaginary friend—only this time she was real.
39. Gut-Wrenching
My little sister had an imaginary friend called “Rhymey Guy” from the age of two to about five years old. He was half hamster, half-man, six-inches tall, and he always spoke in rhymes. Once, she randomly began freaking out in the middle of a meal, and when we asked her why, she said that Rhymey Guy had jumped into her mouth and she had swallowed him.
About an hour later, she started complaining that she hurt because “Rhymey Guy was eating her insides". She said her stomach and chest hurt for the next week or so, and she would tell us that she was “trying to poop him out, but he kept crawling back in". It was totally creepy, and after that incident, she told us that Rhymey Guy wasn't her friend anymore and that she was scared to go to sleep because he might crawl back inside her.
My mom had to “take him out of the room” every night to get her to go to sleep. When she was five and a half, or so, she told us that Rhymey Guy left to find “another girl to climb inside of". The mind of a child is truly wonderful.
40. Avoid The Void
One day, when she was about three years of age, our littlest one was in a panic in her crib about “the girl from the closet” who “floats,” which she informed me about while pointing over my shoulder. Against my better judgment, I followed her direction—and I'll never forget what I saw. The entire upper half of the room behind me seemed to be coated in an opaque black. It was about 6 a.m., and sunlight was just barely spilling into the room, so it should have illuminated more than that.
Picking up a bad vibe, I didn't look twice; I grabbed the kid, and we got out of that room. I know that sounds dreamlike and unusual, and you'd think that in that situation, I might have stayed longer to examine the room, but every ounce of my being had entered flight mode for a reason I cannot truly articulate.
41. The Ill and the Deceased
My sister had an imaginary friend when she was a little kid called Aster. She said she’d named Aster herself; she didn’t know her real name because Aster never told her. Aster was a little girl with long blonde hair and blue eyes, and she wore a blue dress with lace on the top, but she never wore shoes. Okay. Sounds great.
Aster was pale. She was always tired. She often said her stomach hurt. Uh, okay? Aster has lines coming from her eyes. Aster's eyes are blurry. Um...Granted, it was strange, but Aster seemed like a reasonably normal imaginary friend to me. Maybe she was just a little bit weird, but hey, kids are weirdos, and they come up with weird things, right?
At least, that’s what I thought until I started reading up on our area's history, and I came across a story about a little girl who passed from typhoid a long time ago. There was a photo of the girl and her family; she was a little blonde-haired blue-eyed girl that fit Aster’s exact description. And I was like, “...Hold the heck up". So, I looked it up, and yep—lethargy and stomach aches are symptoms of typhoid. Cut to me having a mini heart attack.
My sister was a good bit older at this point, and she never brought up Aster anymore. I never showed her the photo or asked for more details about Aster because I don’t want to know, frankly. If my sister was friends with a ghost, that’s her problem because that’s some cliché horror movie stuff, and she can keep me the heck out of it, please.
42. That’s Really Messed Up
I was over at my friend's house when we were in the ninth grade. His little brother said his imaginary friend was standing behind us and that she hated us a lot. Later on, everyone was outside playing football, and I ran back inside to grab my stuff because my mom was there to pick me up. They had a super long hallway with their rooms across from each other at the end.
His brother had JUST gotten in trouble for having a messy room, which he blamed on his imaginary friend. As I'm walking back down the hallway, I hear beating on all of the walls in the hallway, and then things went ballistic in his room. I peeked inside, and there was stuff EVERYWHERE. I sprinted out of the house and saw that everyone was still outside, and I started freaking out.
They said they typically had their house blessed once a year by their priest but skipped that year because they took a trip to Disneyland. It took me months to go back over, and when I did, my friend pulled out a Ouija board. I just packed my stuff up and left. I haven't been back since, and I haven't spoken to him since high school.
43. This Cloud Had No Silver Lining
For months when I was like 15 to 16 years old, I would wake up and see what I can only describe as a black mist in the top right corner of my room by my door. It was always in the same spot. It was maybe three feet in diameter, and it mostly looked like smoke or mist, but whenever I looked closer, it seemed more like something was hiding inside it—something curled up, completely black, and with red eyes.
Often, I saw it in sleep paralysis, but sometimes I saw it completely awake. I never told my family about this, but it was terrifying. A few years later, I was with my mom talking about all sorts of random things. We got on the topic of psychics, and she mentioned that when she was younger, she went to a party, and a friend introduced her to a woman who claimed to be a psychic.
According to my mom, this psychic went wide-eyed when she shook my mom's hand and absolutely freaked out. She looked at my mom's friend and said she had to leave the party; she wouldn’t stay in the house with my mom. The psychic then looked at my mom and told her something unsettling. She said, “You have something following you. There’s a black cloud above your head". Then she left the party.
My mom never paid much attention to it; she dismissed the psychic as a disrespectful woman at the party who was either insane or under some substance influence. Now, fast-forward a few more years: I’m 24, my mom still lives in the same house, and she has a new daughter as well (my little sister is about three years old). My little sister’s bedroom is my old bedroom.
I’m there talking to my mom and one of her friends, and my mom casually turns to me and asks, “Hey, didn’t you used to have lots of nightmares when you lived here?” I answered, “Yeah, to say the least". She continued, “Strange thing, I think your sister is having them now, too". I responded with, “What do you mean?” What my mom said next shook me to my very core.
“Well, she keeps telling me about her imaginary friend that is a black rain cloud in her room that talks to her at night". I absolutely freaking froze and felt sheer panic. I never told my family the details of what I saw. I looked at my mom and hardly choked out the question, “Did she say where the cloud is?”
“Yeah, actually, it’s always in the top right corner of the room by the door".
44. Burning Issues
I heard from my parents that I had an imaginary friend named Robert—apparently, he had passed in a fire. I don't remember any of this, but my parents told me that I would stare at our fireplace in the winter and say things like, “Turn it off, Robert doesn't like fire,” and “Robert said fire burns". I would say some really creepy stuff.
45. When The Holy Spirit Removes You
I know a kid who once said he didn't want to go to church because “my invisible friend says he can't follow me in there".
46. Don’t Stick Around
When my daughter was around four years old, she had an imaginary friend named Jack who lived under our back porch. He liked to shove sticks down people's throats. I told her that maybe Jack wasn't the nicest person to hang out with!
47. Child’s Play
My youngest sister, who was four at the time, had an imaginary friend named Paris Jaris. My dad built her a small playhouse in our backyard where my mom could monitor her from the kitchen, and my sister would have tea parties and such with her imaginary friend. One day, my mom heard her say, “Don’t worry, as long as I’m alive, they won’t hurt you".
She then paused for a moment and said, “Well, if you do that, then I can’t help you; it’s not nice to kill people". When my mom asked her what that was about, my sister said, “Sometimes I have to tell Paris to be a nice person, or he can’t visit anymore". We moved not too long afterward, and she didn’t get a new playhouse.
48. Bye-Bye, BB
My eldest son was about two years old when he had an imaginary friend. BB was orange, the size of a large apple, and covered in fur. BB was cool. Occasionally my son would yell at him to be nice, but overall, he was good. One day in the car, my son randomly yelled, “THAT'S IT!” He put his window down, threw something out, and then calmly put his window back up.
When we asked him what happened, his response sent chills down my spine. He said quite frankly that he tossed BB out the window and that BB was now lifeless. We inquired about BB in the following weeks, but he always gave the same response—BB was no longer with us. My son is now 10, and he still remembers BB. He says BB was a jerk and deserved it, but he can't remember why.
49. Mommy Dearest
When my son was first learning to talk, he would tell us about something called “Purple Mommy". It could’ve been an imaginary friend, but whatever it was, it creeped the heck out of me. Here are a few of the details. Purple Mommy is all purple with long hair and bright all-white eyes (at the time, he mixed up purple with black, so he could have meant she was all black).
Purple Mommy picked him up at night and turned off the lights. We would often find my son out of his crib in the morning, which would have meant him crawling over the railing and to the ground at a time when he was barely walking. I definitely found the lights off in his room a few times, too, even though he’s terrified of the dark.
Purple Mommy needed a bandage because she had blood everywhere. Purple mommy had no smile, meaning she had no mouth. Purple Mommy could take her head off. Purple Mommy really didn't like Daddy. He told us all of this stuff for maybe a year or a little more. If we ever asked where she was, he'd always point to the same spot—a corner of the room behind his open closet door.
He would also wake up crying almost every night during that time. Once, during a really rough night, my wife went to ask him what was wrong, and his answer was, “Purple Mommy won’t let me sleep".
50. Shoes Of Deceased Men
Most of my extended family live around the same area, so we have lots of gatherings. For the backstory, one of my uncles (let's call him Steve) lost a childhood friend when he was seven. Steve and his friend (let’s call him Jack) were having a playdate one afternoon and got a bit dirty in some mud. So, Steve’s mother gave Jack a pair of Steve’s shoes to borrow.
When Jack’s father came to pick him up after the playdate, they forgot to take Jack’s shoes back, and Jack accidentally got into the car while still wearing the shoes he’d borrowed from Steve. Tragically, the father and Jack got into a terrible car crash on the way home, and seven-year-old Jack passed. I’m not sure why, but the family had him buried in the shoes he had borrowed from Steve.
Fast-forward 30 years to a family gathering in 2010. My six-year-old cousin Sara is playing alone with some toys in a quieter room of the house. My Uncle Steve comes up to her and asks her what she is playing. Sara responds, saying that she is playing with a friend. Holding back a smile, Steve asks who her imaginary friend is.
Sara continues to play while saying that she is playing with his old friend Jack and that “he is sorry he forgot to give your shoes back". My uncle’s jaw nearly dropped. He had not talked about Jack in years, let alone tell that story to a six-year-old. No one had brought up Jack that day nor at any family gathering recently. Every time I remember this incident, I get chills.
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