1. “I Picked You Because You Were Sad”
I have a 4 year old daughter(almost 5). She is at best, a chatterbox. She talks about lots of things that don’t quite make sense, but she is extremely intelligent.
My husband and I discussed the possibility of having a younger sibling with her and how she would feel about it. She said “I would be happy because your other baby will come back.” I didn’t understand what she meant and asked her to explain what she meant. “Before I was here, they asked me to pick a mommy. I picked you.” I asked her why and she said, “I picked you because you were sad. Your other baby got sick and you were sad. I picked you to make you happy.” I just started sobbing at that point. She said “I think that baby will come back and then we can have a boy baby too!” This happened a few days ago.
Our daughter does not know that I lost a little boy just before she was conceived. We’ve never mentioned it and there’s no possible way she could know. I’m still kind of freaked out, but almost comforted in a way. Maybe he will pick me again…
2. Graveyards
My mother told me that when I was younger (newborn until 4 or 5) I used to wake up from my slumber every time we passed a cemetery in the car.
Apparently once I was able to talk I used to make her turn up the music when we passed because the “voices were too loud” and I “couldn’t listen to so many at once.”
Still freaks her out. Makes me question my sanity at that age….
3. Creepy Things A 3-Year-Old Said
I am always writing these down. Here are a few..
“Someday I will have a farm and I will have some animals like a rat and some mices. I will have a little pecker chicken with a little pecker thing and he will pecker my head and make a hole and it will tickle!”
Visiting a friend’s new baby and my son’s first words were “When will that baby die?”
I was watching my son play with his trucks on the floor and smiled and said “I love you” he responded “I love you too. I actually don’t feel like killing you right now”
When my son was much younger he would talk about the woman who lives in our wall and misses her family. We’d find him upstairs with a pile of blankets just laying there and he’d say he was laying down with the lonely woman.
4. I Like You More Than My Last Mommy
My 3-4 years old nephew (It was about 18 years ago, he is now 22) once said to his mom (my sister):
“I am happy, because you are my mommy now. I like you more than my last mommy. I want you to be my mommy next time, too. Promise me, you will be my mommy.”
5. Man On The Stairs
When I was younger my 5 year old cousin and I were playing upstairs at my grandmother’s house. She looks at me and says ‘there’s a man coming up the stairs!’ I look and of course there’s no one there. She says it again and adds ‘but I don’t know how he got up the stairs without any legs.’ I was fairly creeped out but since it was daytime and there was no one on the stairs I forgot about it… Until 2 weeks later when we found out our neighbor a few doors down, a lonely older man, had just been found dead, apparently about 2 weeks dead. Our double amputee neighbor. This was one of several creepy things that my cousin had said.
6. Five-Year-Old Prays Creepy Prayer
My son is five and always wants me to say goodnight prayers with him. We always pray for the fairies to watch over him while he sleeps. He also has me call the fairies so he feels comforted and safe going to sleep. This is our bedtime ritual.
Two nights ago he asks me to call the dead fairies. I ask him why I would want to do that. I told him I only call on beautiful and good fairies to watch over him. He said the dead fairies would protect him from dead things that bother him in his sleep.
He said “It’s okay, Mommy. Most of them still have their skin.”
7. Cannibalism
My daughter was about 5, calmly playing with legos when she looked up and asked me, very quietly, “Is it time to eat each other yet? If it is, I choose you.”
8. Granny Comes To Visit
When my daughter was about 4, I heard her in the spare room of my parents’ house chatting away. My gramma lived in that room for the last 10 years of her life.
I peaked in the room to see what my daughter was doing, and I heard her say, “Okay, I love you. Bye,” and kissed a mirror that belonged to my great-gramma. I asked her who she was talking to, and she said very plainly, “Gramma.”
I called my dad over and said to my daughter, “Tell papa who you were talking to.” She smiled and said, “Gramma.” I asked where gramma was, and she pointed in the mirror. “In there.”
9. My Little Sister
This is something my little sister said a long time ago. Her and I are almost 13 years apart. My sister was still in a car seat when my mom would pick me up from school. We would always stop at the same convenient store for a drink and a snack every day. So we pull up to the store and my mom is about to get out of the car when my sister starts screaming bloody murder. Thinking a bug had stung her or that she was pinched in the car seat, mom opens the back door immediately and starts inspecting her and asking what’s wrong. My sister just says, “get back in the car.” Over and over. So my mom gets back in the car and asks her again what’s going on. My sister says, “that man over there is a bad man and he kills people.” A guy had pulled up right as my mom was getting out of the car. He was in his maybe late 40’s and looked ‘normal’. We tried a few times asking her why she said that or how she knew it, but she never could tell us. That was the one and only time she’s ever done that. She’s now 17 and doesn’t remember that day. It still gives me chills just thinking about it. It was the just blood curdling scream you’ve ever heard.
10. Cousin Is A Reincarnated WW1 Pilot
I have some cousins in Austria. I always liked these cousins, because I thought they were cool and they were around my age. The oldest was the boy – he was born in June of 94, a year before me.
He was always a really smart kid. He got the best grades in school, was a piano prodigy and could do a lot of stuff that little kids his age weren’t really able to do. And he was strangely serious and quiet, all the time. But there was this distinct leader-ish quality about him. Whenever we played games, he would insist we play “war”, and he would “lead us into battle” – us meaning his sisters, his friends, me and my brother.
I remember when he was first teaching himself how to play the piano. He was about 6, and I was 5. I would always try to play with him, and he would get frustrated. “No, no, no, you’re doing it wrong!” he used to tell me. “That’s not how we used to do it when I was big!”
This obviously piqued the curiosity of my other family members. “R,” one uncle once asked him, “what do you mean? How did you do it when you were ‘big’?”
“Like this,” he said once. And he started playing this amazing haunting piano melody, nothing anyone had ever heard before. It was something right out of a past era of the country, something that us children in the 90s had little to no exposure to – his parents much preferred the Beatles to the classical music (I know, ironic).
He was fascinated with planes. He once described (to multiple astounded workers at an aeronautics museum in Germany) the parts of one of the Fokker planes – WWI era fighter planes. They all crowded around him and asked him questions, and he described in detail how to fly the thing. We were all stunned. He spoke fluidly and clearly, in a voice too calm and collected for a 7-year-old boy. When the one guy asked him how he knew so much, my cousin shrugged and said, “I used to fly one.”
He used to draw the most detailed pictures too. A lot of them were of old aeroplanes, with the imperial Austrian insignia on them, and other decorations. It was really weird.
He also used to draw very detailed pictures of WWI-era uniforms, soldiers, more planes, horses, and (disturbingly) gruesome battle scenes. Of course these were very frightening to his parents and to the rest of the family – rightfully so. One day during the barbecue, his mum asked, “R, what are you drawing?”
He was drawing another bloody battle scene, with trenches and soldiers in gas masks with guns, and planes flying above. “I’m drawing me when I was big. I’m right there,” he told her, pointing to a plane.
“And what are you doing there?” she asked him.
He looked her dead in the eye. “I’m killing Frenchmen,” he said.
The previously noisy backyard went SILENT. Everyone just stared at him. His mother regained her composure and said, “Sweetie, why are you killing Frenchmen?”
“Because I hate them,” he said nonchalantly. “I hate those dirty dogs. I was ordered to shoot them out of the sky. And I was going to shoot them down, one by one, until they were all DEAD. But then the RAF came and shot me first, English swine.”
My great aunt wanted to get him exorcised.
As he got older, these things started happening less and less, and eventually we forgot all about them, until one day years later, when we were sitting around, watching the 2008 German film about the Red Baron. I suddenly remembered everything, and noticed that my cousin wasn’t sitting on the sofa with us. He was outside on the balcony in the backyard, staring at the sky.
“Hey R, what are you doing?” I asked him, joining him.
“I don’t know…I just had the weirdest sense of dèjá-vu. When I saw those guys flying in those planes, I had this flashback of me sitting in this bright red aeroplane, preparing for take-off or something.”
I told him the stuff I had remembered, and he turned progressively whiter and whiter. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he stammered. He remembered absolutely nothing about any of it.
But then later that night, he came inside my room and sat down on my bed. “Moritz,” he said. “I think my name was Moritz.”
We never talked about it again after that, and that was 3 years ago (2011). But sometimes, I’ll catch him outside, staring wistfully at the sky like he belongs there. I’m trying to convince him to go get his pilot’s license, because I seriously believe that he doesn’t belong stuck on the ground with the rest of us measly humans – I think he belongs flying planes. May be creepy, but I know he’d be much happier in the air.
11. What’s In The Closet?
I was in a room with my young cousin and he kept pointing at the closet door and I said “What are you looking at?” and he said “The man with the long fingers is looking at me and pointing.”
12. Mommy
Just three nights ago my nine year old son and I were discussing things in the kitchen. When I said ‘we will ask mommy when she gets home’ he relied with “if she’s not here, who’s upstairs?” We were alone in the house. Gave me a heck of a chill.
13. Bad Shadows
“Not that way. There are bad shadows.”
My son telling me he didn’t want to cross the fully sunlit walking bridge over the highway to the beach.
14. Creepy In Their Sleep
This is actually a couple short stories of real things I’ve actually seen small children do in their sleep.
The first one was my oldest daughter when she was about two. One night, I’m ripped from my sleep by blood-curdling screaming. I rush to her room the find her trying to climb the wall by her bed while she was screaming “don’t touch me” over and over. I finally pulled her off the wall and she was still sleeping and trying to claw my face off. After about five minutes, we finally got her awake but she didn’t remember anything. The creepy thing is my daughter has never been exposed to anything that would trigger night terrors and she never had another one. It was very strange.
The second story is about my youngest daughter. This one is actually an ongoing thing and gives me the creeps every single time. It started when she was around 18 months, once every couple of months she started laughing in her sleep. And not just laughing, but cackling hysterically. And when we go to her, her eyes are wide open and she’s always staring at the same corner of her ceiling. And if you stood in front of her, she’d look through you. When we finally get her awake, still laughing, all she will say is “their faces look funny”. This went on for over two years. We finally moved her into another room and it hasn’t happened since.
The last story is about my nephew, who is now 18 months old. My sister bought a video baby monitor so she can actually watch her son sleep. I think it’s a bit overkill, but to each their own. I will admit, it is kind of spiffy and the picture quality on the night vision is pretty good even if your eyes glow like a demons when you look directly into the camera. I was hanging out with my sister one night and her son was in bed and we had the monitor going. At one point my sister just stopped mid sentence and just stared wide-eyed at the monitor. I looked over and her son is sitting up in his crib, staring directly at the camera. It was eerie how still the one-year-old was. A few seconds passed before he spoke. “Die.” Then he laid back down and went back to sleep. My sister said she didn’t sleep well for a week.
15. Not At All Reassuring
My 6 year old is a typical well adjusted child, but every once in awhile he comes up with the most random and disturbing shit.
Today, I’m playing legos with my son. He was explaining how he’s the king and I’m the second in command knight when he stopped, looked at me and said,
“Mommy I would never drink your blood. I only drink from dead people.”
Um. Ok.
16. No Mirrors
When my son was about 4 years old, he busted out with how he was informed by his imaginary friend how he was no longer able to look into mirrors, as that’s how “they” would get him. He lost his shit when there was a mirror near him. I finally just took all the mirrors out of my house for several years. Years later, I asked him about this and he just smiled and said, “They didn’t get me, did they?”
17. The Funny Man
So my niece was watching cartoons in my room last night when she suddenly looks to the window and says “oh the funny man is trying to get in,” she’s 3, and there was no one there.
So I asked who, and her response was “the funny man with the mask.”
18. Dead People Visit Boy In Coma
When my brother woke from a two week coma (he was 11) my mum asked him how he was and he said “good – Grandpa and Uncle Ben visited me today””. My mum tried so hard not to freak out – Grandpa had died 8 years before and Uncle Ben had died 20 years before – my brother hadn’t even met him!! Mum asked him “what did they say?” and he said ‘”Grandpa called me a good little walker (apparently that was Grandpa’s nickname for my brother) and Uncle Ben just stood at the end of the bed twirling his moustache”. Mum had completely forgotten that her long dead brother had the habit of playing with his moustache.
19. “The Other Me Is Mean”
My mother told me this story when I refused to put a mirror up in my dorm room. (I put it in my closet so I could shut the door on it and not see it unless I’m getting ready.) When I younger, about 6 or 7, I developed an aversion to mirrors. My mother said I’d throw tantrums about going to the bathroom at night and would tell her: “The other me is mean!” She asked me what I meant and I told her that one night I had gotten up at 3:15, (She said I was very sure to point out an exact time), and had gone to the bathroom. I told her when I was washing my hands I looked up and my reflection (‘other me’) was frowning and looked mad. I also said that she leaned in close like she was inspecting me through the mirror. My mother wrote it off as me being sleepy and not understanding what I was seeing. Then, she said that one night she had woken up with a horrible headache and couldn’t get back to sleep, so she decided to try a hot shower. The tension and pain eased up and she thought she’d be able to go back to sleep. She said as she was getting dried off and dressed, she happened to glance at the mirror and saw her own reflection looking very angry and mad. She was frightened and didn’t sleep that night at all-When she fled from the bathroom she noticed the time on her clock read 3:15. She said she’d never been so scared.
My mother is sensitive to these things and felt it was a bad sign. After the incident, people who would come to our house as well as us would see shadows in the bathroom where there shouldn’t be any. Whatever phenomenon it was-my father never experienced it. My mother was hesitant to tell me her story because she thought I’d think she was insane. Apparently, my younger cousin has also encountered her own ‘other me’ when she stays with my mom.
20. That Poor Girl
When I was a Pre-K teacher, I heard some pretty imaginative and strange things. I think the strangest was this:
A little boy in my class had built something out of legos. He was very proud of it and excited to show me. “Oh, that’s awesome!” I said. “Can you tell me what it is?” 5 Year Old Boy: “It’s a tower. There’s a girl inside. And there’s no light, and there’s no air…” He trailed off as he looked up at me grinning…
21. “I’d Put Them In The Oven”
Me and my 3 year old son were watching TV and a commercial came on for that “6 Marks” movie about a kid who makes duplicates of himself. I like to ask my son goofy questions sometimes… it feels like it gives him a chance to use his imagination and think creatively.
So I turned and asked, “What would you do if you had 6 of you?”
He looked at me and matter-of-factly said, “I’d put them in the oven.” It totally took me by surprise… i figured he’d say play basketball or ninja turtles or something. So I just kind of sat there and looked at him, which must have made him think he had to explain to me why, so he said,
“I’d turn up the heat really high. That would melt them, wouldn’t it Daddy? That would make them all go away.”
So I just said, “Uh… yeah, it would.” And that was the end of the conversation.
22. “I Died, Mom”
The other night, I was warning my daughter about choking on something. She asked if she would die. I was kind of shocked by the question, but said she could, or get really sick and have to go to the hospital.
The rest I’ll tell in her words:
“I died, mom. Like this (then laid on the floor and made horrible gasping/gurgling sounds). Edit: like a “death rattle”
I got hit right here (showed me her stomach, pointed right above her belly button). It was a biiiig cut. Then I fell and I died (she laid on the floor and made the weird sounds again).
Then a big man put a string on my belly button, and then I was Alex! (jumped up and did a move like a magician does after an act). Then I had a mommy again.”
All I could do was just stare at her, just flabbergasted by her story. I couldn’t think of anything she would’ve seen anything close to this from, so I asked her dad. He couldn’t think of anything either, and suggested it might be a kind of past life memory.
I’m really not sure what to think about this, and I’m even more confused about how a 3y/o came up with such a descriptive story… especially the stabbing part.
23. It’s A Lullaby
My girlfriend’s friend was staying here for a while, while between houses, and one of her daughters, 4 years old, one night began singing a song. My girlfriend heard it and was like what the fuck? It was Sissy’s song by Alan Jackson. Now, no one here listens to country music and this kid definitely has had no place she’d have heard it, being a mixed kid in a home where country music was less likely to have been played than Romanian opera, which itself was unlikely.
This particular song, was the song played at my girlfriend’s mother’s funeral, back in 2009 around and before when she was born. My girlfriend was just wide eyed, like what the hell, and asked her where she knew this song from. It wasn’t just the tune, it was word for word the lyrics she’d sung, and at 4, it had to have been recent and regular enough she’d pick it up. She refused to tell us, told us she wasn’t supposed to tell. My girlfriend was just dazed by it, that particular song and being a country song from the daughter who’s exposure to any country music, is extremely rare at best. We asked more, with similar responses. I’m not supposed to tell, no, I’m not telling! from this little 4 year old. Finally, I figured I’d just make made a photo collage of several similar aged photos of various people and threw her mothers photo in it as well. All being of similar quality / age / crappy photography, there really wasn’t much standing out of the cellphone photo from 2009 of her mother. When I pulled the collage up on my screen, to see if she had any reactions to any of the people, she stopped at her mother and asked “What’s her name?” and my girlfriend said her mother’s name. Juliana said “I know..stop asking about the song, it’s just a lullaby.”
That was awkward. Now, neither me nor my girlfriend are much (read: not at all) towards the idea of supernatural anything and lacking that as a final explanation it was just all together creepy.
24. My Other Family
Recently I was talking to my mom about the time when I was little, in the conversation she told me that when I was around four years old I would I would talk about my family and always ask to see them, and when my mom told me that her and my aunt were my family, I would say
“No! the other one”
Apparently I would never go into anymore detail about the family than that, she says I would always look so confused when they asked who my other family was, like I couldn’t understand why they didn’t know who I was talking about.
The only other notable thing that happened was that one day we were driving down a road and as we passed a house in the car. I started slapping my hands on the window repeatedly and yelled,
“That’s were they live!”
My mom says that there was a brief pause, and then my grandma asked,
“Who lives there, pumpkin?”
“The other family! That’s where they live! Stop please I wanna talk to them again!”
No one in the family talks about this anymore, because it was just some crazy shit a 4-year-old said, but hearing about it now just makes it seem a bit weird you know?
25. “He’s Gonna Cook”
My three year old son was in the car with grampa and spotted another car on the road when the following conversation took place.
“Grampa that man’s going to die. ”
“What? ”
“His car is going to burn… He’s gonna cook. “
26. Her Brother’s ‘PopPop’
I used to be a Pre-K teacher. There was one little girl (4 years) in the class who was normally very well behaved, but had been extremely over-emotional lately. Her mom told me she hadn’t been sleeping well but couldn’t figure out why (her daughter wouldn’t tell her). Later that day, I asked her why she hadn’t been sleeping, to see if I could help her mom out a little. She said, “Well, he won’t stop talking to me.” I asked, “who?” She said “PopPop. Well… he’s not really my PopPop, he’s my brother’s PopPop. He talks to me every night.” Later, I informed her mother, thinking that maybe her grandfather lived with them and she could hear him talking after her bedtime. Her mom just looked at me wide-eyed and said, “Her PopPop died before she was born.”
27. Girl Misses Her Ghost Friends
So my 3-year-old has said some weird shit since we moved away from our home town, but I’m pretty sure our old house was haunted.. She’d talk to people that weren’t there, but only in her closet.. She refused to sleep in her own bed, but now she’s comfortable in her own room. We moved out of that house a few days ago, and our first night in the new house she asks me “where are my ghost friends?” I asked who her friends were and she responds “bella and the man.”
Now let me tell you this, “bella” is apparently the girl that died in her room, according to my daughter anyway. The man only comes out at night, and he’ was only in her closet. I used to be scared of going down stairs in the dark in that house, but I’m perfectly comfortable doing it in the new house.
28. Gummy Bear Screams
I don’t give my kids sweets very often, but for a treat I gave my youngest a few gummy bears after her lunch. She sat in her high chair and picked one up…and screamed. She continued to scream until she bit off it’s head. This was repeated with each gummy bear. It’s taken me over a year to give her gummy bears again, and this time she looked at me and said “Don’t worry, these are already dead!”
29. Kid Is Psychic
She is 3 and I’m her nanny. We have a routine. We go to the pie shop on a Thursday and then fossick around in the charity shop next door.
She is quietly chewing on her doughnut as we approach about 4 meters from the shop and she freezes in her tracks.
I prompt her on she stands stock still staring at the ground, mouth full of food, shaking her head furiously.
“NO!”
I take her hand and she pulls away saying NO all the while…
I take her by the hand and pull her into the shop with a
“Stop being so silly” etc..
She looks terrified, darting looks left and right, starts shaking and promptly disappears beneath a rack of clothing.
The shop ladies who know her, are just as quizzical as I am. “what is up with her today?…” shrugs.
Just then i look up to see this old woman come storming at me from the back of the shop and she starts to rail at me accusing of stealing something worth a dollar on my previous visit.
WTF? We then go on to have this huge fight with all the other ladies and me against the nutter…
(Turned out, the old duck was off her meds…)
I collect my charge and leave the shop. she squeezes my hand and says. “I told you I didn’t want to go to the shop today.”
30. Complex Beyond Her Years
As 4 yrs old “lil’ weirdos'” nanny, I am rattling around their mansion doing my thing.. Miss 4 is practising the piano as her parents leave for work.
Typical plonking away at twinkle twinkle little star or something as equally rough and tuneless.
Suddenly, my attention is drawn to the sound of her playing a beautiful melody, complex beyond her years.
(I was married to a composer for 27 years so I know classical music when I hear it.)
I stood outside the door and listened for a while, then I entered the room.
She practically shot out of her skin in fright.
Clearly upset she said “I didn’t think anyone was down here.”
I queried her as to where she learnt the tune.
“Is that a song you learnt from your piano teacher?”
Head shake…”I know it.”
“Did you learn it?”
“No , I know it … I think I made it up.”
“What is it called?”
“Moonlight on the meadow.”
She is 4 yrs and no one else in the family plays the piano.
31. The Other Man Watches
So my 5 year old nephew and I are really close and he loves playing toys with me. So ever since I started college I rarely see him so when I do all he wants to do whenever I’m around is play toys all of the time. So this caused his bad habit of going into my room in the morning before I wake up and playing in there and sometimes staring at me until I wake up so we can immediately start playing. I’ve told him before that he can’t do this but he doesn’t listen. So over this Thanksgiving break he did it and I asked him why he keeps on doing it despite me telling him not to (because usually he’s really good at listening and not doing things we tell him not to). He replied “I don’t think it’s fair that I can’t be in your room when you’re asleep but the other man can watch you all night long!” before immediately running out of my room yelling it wasn’t fair. Needless to say it now takes me significantly longer to fall asleep at my house.
