Just when you thought you were ready for poopy diapers and drippy noses and no sleep ever again—the REAL reason having kids is so terrifying: they can see what we cannot. Let's face it: kids can be super creepy. A mom asked Reddit users to share the scariest thing their kids have ever said about their scary imaginary friends. See you at the bottom.
1. A creepy imaginary friend without a face
"My son from the age of three always tells me about the ‘creeper man’ who lives in my mom and dad’s bedroom. He brings it up after he visits them. I made the mistake once of asking what he looks like. My son said ‘Oh, he doesn’t have a face."
2. Is this imaginary friend a ghost?
“A parent of one of my students told us in a meeting that she was concerned because her son (7 years old) talked about an invisible ghost who would talk to him and play with him in his room. He said the ghost was called The Captain and was an old white guy with a beard. The kid would tell his mom that The Captain told him when he grows up his job will be to kill people, and The Captain would tell him who needed to be killed. The kid would cry and say he doesn’t want to kill when he grows up, but The Captain tells him he doesn’t have a choice and he’ll get used to killing after a while.”
3. Little girl ghost—or imaginary friend?
"When my daughter was three she had an imaginary friend named Kelly who lived in her closet. Kelly sat in a little rocking chair while she slept, played with her, etc. Typical imaginary friend shit. Anyway, fast forward two years later, the wife and I are watching the new Amityville Horror (the one with Ryan Renolds) and our daughter walks out right when the dead girl goes all black-eyed. Far from being disturbed, she said ‘That looks like Kelly.’ ‘Kelly who?’ we say. ‘You know the dead girl that lived in my closet."
4. This toy rabbit might be stuffed with nightmares...
"My cousin, when she was 5, and I was 17, had a stuffed rabbit that she talked to and carried everywhere. One day she was asleep on the couch while I was watching her, and she woke up and started yelling at her rabbit for no reason. One minute she was knocked out, the next, she’s awake, glaring at her rabbit, yelling, ‘No! You can’t do that! That’s bad! Don’t do it!’ I asked her what was wrong and tried to get her to stop, but she wouldn’t listen. I finally just took the rabbit up to her room, and when I came back down she was asleep on the couch again. F*ck whatever that rabbit was planning on doing."
5. The untimely demise of an imaginary friend under a coffee table
“My little brother’s imaginary friend, Roger, lived under our coffee table. Roger had a wife and nine kids. Roger and his family lived peacefully alongside us for three years. One day, my little brother announced that Roger wouldn’t be around anymore, since he shot and killed him and his whole family. I don’t know if he remembers any of this, but his genuine lack of remorse was very disturbing.”
Related: 20 People Share the Creepiest Things That Happened to Them as Kids
6. The imaginary boy in the tree
“My folks’ farm surrounds a cemetery, and my dad and my niece were walking down there. My niece (4) looks up and says, ‘What’s that boy doing up in that tree?’ There was no boy, but she insisted there was and could describe him.”
7. The creepy bunny man
“When I was 16, I babysat twins who were in the third grade at the time. They always spoke of a man in an Easter Bunny costume, and they were terrified of him. One day I was babysitting, and one twin was in the shower. His brother and I were sitting downstairs watching television when all of the sudden, he said, ‘You need to go check on Matt.’ Seconds later, Matt yelled, ‘He’s in here!!! He’s in here!!!’ I ran upstairs, and I had to check every room before he would calm down. I’m not sure which part of the experience freaked me out the most.”
8. Shaggy—a creepy friend in the fridge
"When my mom was younger she had an imaginary friend named Shaggy. When she was finished with Shaggy, she ‘chopped him up and put him in the fridge.'"
9. This scary imaginary friend gave a chilling command
“When my brother was just learning how to talk he grabbed one of those small toy hammers and crawled onto the sofa where my dad was sleeping. He then leaned in close and whispered one of his first sentences… ‘Smash daddy’s head’ right into his ear.”
10. Dark angels
"When my brother was little he acted like he had angels talking to him every second. One day my mom overheard him say, ‘I can’t kill him! He’s my only dad!'”
Related: 17 Killer Kids Who Will Change the Way You See Children
11. The strange man in the bedroom
“My daughter used to tell me about a man who came into her room every night and put the sign of the cross on her forehead. I thought it was just a dream. Then my mother-in-law sent over some family photos. My daughter looked right at the picture of my husband’s father (who has been dead for 16 years) and said ‘That’s the man who comes into my room at night!’ My husband later told me his father would always do the sign of the cross on his forehead when he was young.”
12. Messages from a deceased grandmother
“My wife and I overheard my two-year-old daughter on the baby monitor wake up on Saturday morning and say, ‘What? OK I’ll tell her.’ She then got up, came into our bedroom, and told my wife, ‘Mary says you’re doing a good job.’ Mary was her grandmother that she was extremely close to that passed away.”
13. This person called their imaginary friend 'Spooky Guy'
“As a kid, I said that my imaginary friend was a ghost. I called him Spooky Guy and said he died in the garage of the house on the hill behind ours. I even came up with his death. He was a 16-year-old who got in a car crash and walked to that house to ask to use their phone (died in the 70’s). The person who lived there grabbed him and sexually abused him there and killed him. He was my imaginary friend as far back as I can remember. This scared my mom so much that she tried to look up records to see if that happened and got me a therapist.”
14. This creepy imaginary friend had a spooky message
“In high school, one of my best friends had a little sister who was five or six years old. One day we stopped by his place, completely high, because he needed to get his Magic cards. While waiting for him to come downstairs his sister came up to me and said, ‘Icy told me to ask you if you know when you’re going to die.'”
I laughed nervously: morbid question, right? But I knew all about Icy, her imaginary friend. I even helped her draw a picture of him once. So I played along and said, ‘No, of course not! No one knows that. Hopefully when I’m very old.’
The girl shook her head sadly and said, ‘No, Icy wants me to tell you it’ll be tonight.’ And with that, she just walked away.”
15. "It is the punishment"
“I was seventeen and babysitting a friend of the family’s six-year-old boy. He’d been in bed a couple of hours and I just peeked in to check on him. He wasn’t in the bed and when I opened the door, I saw he was standing in the corner, facing the wall. Creepiest fu*king thing ever. I asked him what he was doing and all he did was turn around, smile, and put his finger to his lips as if to say ‘shhh.’ I asked him again what he was doing and all he says is, ‘Leave us. It is the punishment.'”
16. This imaginary friend may have saved a life
“My grandfather had a camp on Lake Dering in New Hampshire when I was a kid. One day when I was 6 or so, I fell off of the dock and into the water. I couldn’t swim. While under, I distinctly remember seeing a little girl down there who told me to look up towards the sun and just keep kicking and I’d be fine. I swam to the surface just in time for my grandfather to swoop me up and pull me back on the dock.”
17. Scary imaginary friend in a corner
“When my boy was 4, his imaginary friend would sit in the corner of the room when you switched off the lights and light the room with red glowing eyes.”
18. These imaginary friends were both dead
“Kid I used to babysit had imaginary friends. They were dead. One had no head. One was an old lady. They were both bloody. The one with no head had insides sticking out of his neck.
I didn’t ask him questions about them because f*ck that.”
19. The imaginary policewoman friend
“When my niece was about 4 she had an imaginary friend, which I don’t remember the name of. She would blame things she did on this imaginary friend but also talked about how this friend would watch Scooby Doo with her. One day I thought, ‘Why don’t I find out more about this friend?’ So I asked her to tell me about her friend. And she said, ‘She’s a she, and she’s dead.’ And I said, ‘Does she have a job?’ And she said, ‘She does what my daddy does!’ Which is that her imaginary friend was a cop. So then I said, ‘Where is your imaginary friend a policewoman at?’ And she said, ‘Right next I to where my daddy is a policeman.’ But then she said, ‘I met her when I was in my mummy’s belly. She touched it when I was inside.’
A few months before my niece was born my cousin Tracy had died. She was hit by a train. She loved watching Scooby Doo and had a ton of memorabilia. She was also a cop. She was a cop in the town that is right next to the one my brother-in-law is a cop in, my niece’s ‘daddy.’ My niece’s imaginary friend was my dead cousin. There is no other way she could have known all that at the age of 4.”
20. A strange imaginary friend from The Titanic
“When my kid was 4, we were watching a documentary on the Titanic. The scene was a picture of the schematics of the boiler room and the camera panned from left to right over the plans. He pointed at the TV and said, ‘That’s wrong. The boilers were on the other side. And I was right here.’ And he pointed to a small space in the boiler room. ‘That’s where I was. And that’s why I don’t like water now.'”
21. Emily, the creepy imaginary friend in the closet
“When my sister was probably about 6 or 7, she had an imaginary friend named Emily. She told us Emily lived in her closet, wore an old black dress, and had long dark hair and she was the same age as my sister. My sister played with Emily constantly. My parents started noticing my sister acting weird. Just sitting in the middle of her room whispering to Emily quite a bit and acting a lot more distant towards them. I remember a very specific day, my brother was walking by her room and my sister was sitting in the middle of her room….but she turned around and hissed at him. He was scared shitless. He told me it didn’t even look like my sister. My parents ran up to her room and I could hear my sister just screaming and screaming.”
“I have no idea what happened in that room but I ran to the bottom of my stairs and the screaming stopped, I saw my parents holding my sister crying their eyes out, she was sobbing as well. I’ve asked her about it today. She’s 24 now. She told me that Emily used to tell her to do horrible things to herself. She actually used to wake up on the roof and not remember how she got there. I’m not kidding. Apparently, Emily absolutely hated my parents so she turned my sister against them. She hates talking about it so I never brought up that specific night. This all happened at my old house. When we moved into a different house, Emily was gone. I’m not making any of this up. My sister's little friend was a really big deal to my family and messed things up for a long time. I’m just relieved we left that house.”
22. This imaginary friend floated above my brother's bed at night
“When my younger brother was around 4, he had an imaginary friend named Victoria Meadowbrooke. He told us that she was the prettiest girl ever and she floated above his bed a night.”
23. This imaginary friend gave a chilling warning
“When my older daughter was two or three, she used to have a couple of imaginary friends, Dodo and DeeDee. They were typical imaginary friends. She would talk to them and play with them, and tell me about their lives.
Then one day, when she was about three, she was talking on her play phone when I walked into the room. She hung up her phone and said to me (with a completely flat voice and deadpan expression): ‘The Evil is coming.'”
This story was first published on Creepy Catalog.
Featured photo: lillie kate / Flickr (CC) Additional photos: Favi Santos / Flickr (CC); Alyssa L. Miller / Flickr (CC); John Lee Maverick / Flickr (CC); lillie kate / Flickr (CC)
