***

She cheated on her boyfriend occasionally, but would claim that it’s not cheating because she would only do it during full moons so it was her werewolf half doing it and not her.

***

My best friend in high school and my first two years of college genuinely believed that she could not only speak to forestry, but that she was a wingless fairy. She would often times, when we went walking her dogs, lean to trees and translate for me what the rustling of nature spoke of. She also would scribble in her books what she called “new alchemy”, violently scribbled circles and vauge shapes she believed held magical and fae magik through her own powers.

We had a falling out after a few years, after she moved to the other side of the country to be with her grandmother. We started talking about a few months ago and I found out she had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. She is currently on two types of medication and she told me her walks are depressingly quiet now.

***

Way back in the 80s, while I was till in elementary school, there was this kid who, everyday, swore he was a ninja.

He couldn’t show us any of his moves or weapons, as his Sensei had forbidden it. But that didn’t stop him for making his outlandish claims, like the nunchucks & ninja stars he had hidden in backpack or how he had fought and killed an entire gang. Et cetera.

One day, he claimed he could spin so fast he could turn invisible. Several classmates demanded he prove it during free-time and for whatever reason, he finally relented.

He started spinning in circles, but we could still see him. So he kept spinning. Until he threw up.

***

My friend thought he was Deadpool with all the powers and all.

He once fell off his bike and broke his arm and he thought it would heal straight away and he refused to go to the hospital as a result.

He now has a really crooked arm.

***

They had really severe childhood abuse/trauma to contend with, and coped with it by believing they were psychic. (We met in like junior high when they still believed this.)

Eventually, they realized that they weren’t entirely wrong — just a little bit misdirected. They’re a deeply empathic person who, thanks to their abuse history, is very good at reading facial expressions, body language, etc. They’re actually a really wonderful person, and ended up becoming a social worker and volunteer at a domestic violence shelter, where all of the qualities that made them a good “psychic” make them GREAT at helping others who are going through a difficult time.

***

I met a girl at a very young age while going to church. Her family was deeply religious, but in a messed up way. So we dated off and on, and after high school hit it off pretty strong. She honestly believed she was a fairy. She would get faced with the reality of not being a fairy and completely shut down, sometimes even attempting suicide.

***

I met a guy who was supposedly pretty close to the level in Scientology where you’re supposed to develop powers like telepathy and stuff. Not sure what became of him. You’d think that once people reached this level and didn’t have powers they’d quit, but brainwashing.

***

From first to sixth grade, I had this friend Ally that genuinely believed she could see dead people and demons and what not. She would do the stereotypical vampire things (pretending to bite people, showing off her canines, talking about blood, etc) but that wasn’t like her main thing.

She had this one “demon” that she said followed her everywhere and hid in the bathrooms that we just called “It”. Ally always described It as being whiter than paper with two slits for a nose and sharp fangs. I whole heartedly believed her because why wouldn’t I? I was a dumb kid that wanted supernatural things to be real, and she was my best friend that had no reason to lie to me. I literally was too scared to use the restroom at school because she said that It always peeked over the stall.

As the years went on, though, I eventually realized that she was making it up. But the conviction with which she said that kind of stuff was scary. I know her parents were going through a rough patch at the time, so I think she was just making it up for attention, which she got.

I haven’t talked to Ally in while, but another friend of mine ran into her at a fair recently and said she seemed to be doing well. I’m glad things are better for her.

***

A girl in my school, lets call her Emma, believed she came from a different planet that had horses as their gods. Emma convinced my friend and many others that a sheep had told her she was from a magical planet and that she had to worship horses because they are her gods. We were around 11/12 when this was going on and I couldn’t believe my friend believed her. Emma told everybody that she could speak to horses and that they would one day take over the world and we would all turn into horse people. She used to write letters, emails and fake phone calls from her ‘home planet’ If anybody questioned her or told her that she wasn’t actually from there and was a normal human, and not in fact a human horse hybrid, she would cry hysterically and then hold a really serious grudge against that person. She hated me. Her friendship group all wore matching bracelets and sang songs about horses and drew pictures of them. This went on until we were around 14. Im pretty sure she would make a great cult leader though as she managed to convince so many people.

***

One of my closest friends that I lived with through most of college thought she had special powers. It was…weird…to say the least. She’d been bullied all her life and I always reckoned she’d developed this as a coping mechanism. The thing that really stood out to me though was that she was so good at getting people to play along with it and I have no idea how. I saw this scenario play out a few times during the time we lived together and I was always so confused as to how she kept getting people on board so to speak.

General scenario went like this: she’d meet someone and if she really liked them, then after awhile she’d tell me in a very knowing sort of way that she thought they had “the gift” (aka they also had powers…she told me once she thought I had them and I just kind of smiled and nodded and said, “Okie dokie then.”) So then she’d get together for lunch or something with this person and she’d launch into this full-on spiel about how she was all that was standing between the world and destruction and she could tell that they were also special and she needed someone to help her fight these battles (not literal battles more like astral-projection type battles) and help her guard “the gates”. Hilarious side note, the gates were colored: cyan, magenta, yellow and black. She got mad at me one time when I referred to them as the Printer Gates. And you’d think that after unloading all that people would run screaming but they….didn’t. They’d show up at our apartment to talk to her and they’d be talking about these battles and stuff.

All I can figure is she was good at spotting people with over-active imaginations who didn’t fit in well. She probably would’ve made a great cult leader TBH. She now works in IT and we still talk to each other pretty regularly. She wrote a fantasy novel that she’s trying to get published which was actually quite good when she let me read the draft. I’m guessing that became the outlet for her stories when she grew up so to speak.

I kind of want to ask her about what was going on with her, but I kind of don’t want to open that can of worms ever again. When she wasn’t in full-on wtf mode she was the most kind and genuinely fun to be around person. I’m sort of afraid the Printer Gates will rear their ugly head again if I bring it up.

***

Not exactly the same as “otherkin”, but very much in the vein of the question in terms of total reality denial, I know someone who totally, wholeheartedly, believes that they are a Jedi master.

Our families go way back so I happen to know other kids were merciless to him all through childhood. He’s always had problems, though. Kind of one of those people you can feel aren’t quite right but not exactly why.

He decided he was a jedi master one day. Just, like, out of the blue. Credit where credit is due, he went all the way with it. Became a minor nerd celebrity for a while. At first when people challenged the “jedi” thing (Why don’t you have powers then?) he’d say “Jedi is a mindset not a power”, or sometimes “You don’t know the powers I may have” and try to play it off like a joke, but the dude was 100% serious. If you pushed he would outright melt down with tears and screaming.

Apparently his parents financially supported him pretty much entirely, until he (and this part confuses the crap out of me) got married and had a kid WHILE STILL INSISTING ON THE JEDI THING. After that the wife supported him. Eventually he got tired of that and left his family to take off with a teenager he met at a convention. That’s when we cut ties with him. You can be a jedi all you want, but cutting and leaving your kid is some sith lord shit.

***

My cousin. She 100% believed she was a werewolf; she was finally diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar years ago.

***

There’s a theory that some reports of werewolves and monsters are because people were unable to comprehend the illness they had. They would have a sense of self and an awareness that something was wrong, but being unable to diagnose themselves would concoct a monster as, being ill, it would make sense finally why they were changing so.

***

When I was in the US Navy we had this dude who thought he was a wolf in a human body. He would howl at the moon and just be generally strange. I knew someone that had served with him before me at a different command who said he had to be forced by medical to shower. When asked why he wasn’t showing he told them it would wash away his scent and he wouldn’t be able to attract a mate. I don’t know what happened to him.

***

Someone i used to be friends with identified as a Lynx. I was weirded out but she was my friend so i dealt with it. Soon she started to say I was “sitting on her tail” and she was fully convinced she turned into a cat at night. Last i heard of her she was drawing furry porn for 100$ a piece

***

I had a friend who believed that she was a vampire and would try to bite at my wrists and neck very often it got to the point we’re she would bring pigs blood to school and openly drink it out of a cup as if it were juice , scroll forward 2 days I’m visiting her in a mental hospital.

***

Knew a guy that swore that he was a reincarnated Kitsune spirit. He and I got into an argument one day and he swore that he would destroy my life, because “Kitsunes never let go of grudges”. (Mythologically, Kitsunes were described as being especially capricious.) He ended up telling a bunch of lies about me to everyone he could, gaslit another friend into cutting off contact with me, and occasionally I’ll run into someone online that fell for one of the many stories he made up about me.

***

Went to school with a girl who acted like a dog. Barked, panted, pawed at people. In class she would reply normally but then bark at the end.

This went on for 3 yrs. Decided to look her up on FB and she has a good job and seems normal. Teenagers are fucking weird.

***

I actually went to high school with a lot of people like this who eventually grew out of it. I remember one girl specifically because, based on her facebook, she has not grown out of it. She claimed she had multiple personality’s, her main two being herself and the other being a 200 year old British vampire. We live in the US and she would put on a British accent and everything. It seems she has found a partner just like her though and they’re planning a pretty extravagant vampire wedding. Good on them.

***

Years before we had Goths and New Age ‘enlightenment’, I used to manage an occult bookstore and I met wannabe vampires, werewolves, fae, and others. Sometimes it was like being in charge of a Dark Shadows convention. I used to date one of the store’s patrons: a six foot Amazon from Texas who claimed she was a vampire. She wasn’t too crazy, but towards the end of the relationship she was getting too bitey.

***

Yes, unfortunately.

He claimed to have an “invisible tail” and had a dream in which a great mother wolf revealed to him that he had the soul of a wolf. So he did what any sane person would do and started buying furs to masturbate onto (he showed me Ebay links via Facebook and explained that it’s one of the only two ways that he can get off), as well as started fucking dogs (or so he claimed). Last I heard, he’s in Alaska working with sled dogs all the while he’s engaged to a woman who he refuses to have sex with because human sex is disgusting to him.

I need a drink just fucking writing that.

***

Know a guy that was a ‘wolfkin’ back in high school. Imagine this goth dude, that straps a ‘tail’ to his belt and occasionally wears these dumb hairbands with ears.

It’s obvious that most kids were bullying him, because everytime someone would try to defend or befriend him, he’d literally ignore you and when you asked him why he doesn’t want any friends, he’d tell you that he’s a lone wolf and also a story how his ‘pack’ left him?? Which was honestly kinda hilarious.

In the last year, however, he started going to school looking actually normal. He still didn’t talk to anyone, didn’t even see him talking to the teachers this time, only knew he was going to the school therapist pretty much on daily basis.

Haven’t seen him since we graduated until like a year ago, when I saw someone that looked remotely like him hanging out near my campus and since I always like to catch up with some of my classmates. from highschool, I thought I could ask him how his life is going.

He’s a completely different person now, a bubbly outgoing guy, that will spill literally anything about himself without you even asking. It’s honestly great, but also kinda scary.

Later he told me that it was his dad, that made him “change”, apparently threw everything he liked out, because he was done with him being a wolfkin. He doesn’t seem to mind anymore, though, if anything, when we meet, we often joke about our high school horrors; my obnoxious makeup and his weird “fursona”.

***

When I was a kid, I think my classmates believed I thought I was a Power Ranger. I wore morphers constantly, it was my favourite show on TV and I was kind of obsessed. Now, at the same time, I may have pretended I was a Power Ranger in play, but I knew I wasn’t. I kept the morpher with me because I was so freaking alone I needed something. I was getting treated badly at home, school was just as bad and I was incredibly anxious and I just broke. I was puking every single morning before school multiple times. Being that anxious all the time sucks and I just wished the Rangers would come and rescue me. That’s why the morphers were always with me. I was 9/10 and looking back, I knew they were the only reason why I’m still here.

The thing is though, I enjoyed the show until I was 13 because the show grew up with me. I kept it all quiet, the morphers stayed with me but hidden in my backpack after I turned 11. Somehow, thanks to my ass hole mum, everyone knew I still watched it. Even after I stopped, people still believed I was still obsessed with it. they weren’t wrong, but I kept it all quiet. Also, I don’t know why it was such an issue in the first place. Everyone seemed to think I thought I was a Power Ranger and I don’t know why. That crap even followed me to Uni via one guy from my school. He very quickly shut up when I asked him why he was pulling this crap here. I had never spoken to him before or had anything to do with him. He stayed out of my way after that.

People. I never thought I was a Power Ranger. I just enjoyed the show and loved thinking about how it would be to be one. I mostly just thought about how I finally had a group of friends to hang out with and talk to. Actually fighting some monster very rarely came into it. I was just an incredibly lonely and scared kid who latched onto something as a coping mechanism.

***

When I was in uni one of my housemates had his mate come over and hang with us one night. At the time we were all into tabletop RPG and stuff so when I started chatting to him and he mentioned he’s a Half-Angel, Half-Demon Demon Hunter I initially didn’t bat an eye at it. I was like “That’s cool, I’m a telekinetic spirit medium myself” and we chatted happily about it for maybe ten minutes before I began to clock on that he wasn’t talking about RPG.

I gotta admit, when I did figure it out I was not diplomatic. Not aggressive or anything, but not diplomatic. I may have laughed at him.

***

One of my middle school teacher’s children believed he could talk to bees. He quickly enough learned that he could not actually talk to bees. I forget if he learned if he was allergic to bees.

***

Met a girl in psych who believed she could communicate with dead people and tell people’s future. One girl in there had just been through a bereavement and the other girl ‘communicated’ with the dead person so they could talk one last time. We were too scared to confront her and tell her this was a totally fucked up thing to do to someone who was grieving.

I thought she was bat shit crazy but she got let out of that place two months before I did. Make of that what you will.

***

My ex-boyfriend was certain he was a vampire. He kept going to churches, cemeteries, all those kind of places. I failed at bringing him back to reality. He died of cancer in January this year.