1. My daughter became friends with a dead man

We moved into a new house a few months ago. As we were in the process of purchasing the house, the renter who was living in it died unexpectedly of natural causes in his mid-40s. He died right in the middle of the living room.

Shortly after, we move into the house, and almost immediately our 2-year-old daughter starts talking about the ghost that lives in our house. Now let’s be real here — she is 2 and 2-year-olds are VERY impressionable. Halloween had recently passed, and she had this Halloween-themed picture book that she loved to read, so it’s entirely possible that all this talk of ghosts was just coming from looking through that book on a regular basis.

Still, she was always telling me that the ghost was in her play house in the basement, or that the ghost was on the stairs, or that the ghost was standing in the corner. She never seemed to be afraid of the ghost, and considered him to be her friend, so I wasn’t all that concerned even if there really was a ghost haunting our house. If he’s a nice and helpful ghost, it could certainly be a lot worse. I would often tell the ghost that he was welcome to stay if he wanted to, but he was also welcome to go if that would make him happier. I was about 30/70 on the ghost being real and she could see and talk to him versus the ghost being just her imagination fueled by her Halloween book.

…Until one day, when we were going out to the car to go to daycare in the morning. It was still dark out, and rainy. My daughter told me that the ghost was on the back deck, and then she told me that today was the ghost’s birthday and she wanted to sing him Happy Birthday. Once again, I mostly disregarded what she was saying, as she is birthday obsessed and has in the past made us sing Happy Birthday to Mickey Mouse, a bowl of fruit snacks, and the bathroom. So we sang and wished the ghost a happy birthday and went on with our lives.

Later that day, out of pure curiosity, I looked up the obituary of the man who had died in our house.

And wouldn’t you know it? It was his fucking birthday.

2. I saw a demon standing over my husband

Like most couples, my husband and I have a designated “side” of the bed. I sleep on the right and him on the left. My comfortable sleep position is laying on my left side and facing the window, away from him. He alternates between facing the bathroom door or me.

One night a few weeks back, I’m fighting my sleep. I’m laying on my left side, per the norm, but I just can’t get comfortable. My neck is sort of sore from laying on my left so I turn over and face my husband.

When I turn over, I am not only faced with my husband’s back, but with a large shadow standing over him. Immediately the shadow stretches to me and somehow communicates for me to turn over. I remember thinking it’s face was contorted somehow expressing malice, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it looked like. I didn’t hear a voice, but the communication was urgent and angry. Like it wanted to hurt me.

Without thinking, I turn back around and quickly fall asleep. To be honest, I’m not even sure if I was dreaming. The next morning, my husband and I wake up around the same time and go about our usual routine. I don’t say anything because my husband doesn’t like to talk about supernatural stuff or the like (which I felt it was).

However, this morning is strange and he seems to be uncomfortable. After a lot of prodding, he finally admits he had an awful nightmare. He dreamt a demon was trying to make him do things while he was sleeping, “really evil shit” (wouldn’t elaborate) and I woke up during this and the demon attacked me. I didn’t tell my husband that I remember the same thing, only I wasn’t sure if I was asleep.

3. My parents believe I was reincarnated

This is for my parents.

I was about three years old, and it was way past my bedtime. But I was restless, and I snuck out of my bed and made my way to the living room, where my parents were watching a documentary about WW2. I remember hearing things like “Hitler” and “Luftwaffe” and “Messerschmidt”. Now, to a child / toddler who had a trouble enunciating hard consonants, those words were actually very easy to replicate and sound out.

Then I heard my parents talking to each other, idly wondering if the pilots all bought into “that evil bad man Hitler’s lies” and how some of the pilots felt if they had a conscience at all…

Anyways, the next day, I drew a crude plane on a piece of paper and was making “airplane noises” like I had overheard on TV. According to my mother, I never had expressed any interest in planes / had no exposure to planes before (at least, not to her knowledge). So she was curious why I would suddenly draw a plane out of the blue.

“It’s my plane.”

“Oh, it’s your plane?”

“Yeah! My plane! It’s Messerschmidt!”

“What?”

“Messerschmidt, mama! I was in the Luftwaffe.”

“Honey, where did you hear those words?”

“I wanted to do good, but Hitler made me bad. Then I had to go away for a while, but now I’m here!”

Anyways, for YEARS my parents were convinced that I was a reincarnated soul of a WW2 German pilot. It wasn’t until fairly recently that I had a random recall of the whole thing and told my parents, everyone was very amused.