We asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us the creepiest things their kids have ever said. We received a lot of wild and unnerving submissions, but these are by far the most chilling. If you scare easily, now's a good time to flip on a few extra lights. DON'T read this before bed, unless you're brave. 😈
1. "I get sleep paralysis sometimes, and once when my daughter was about 3, I fell asleep on the floor of her bedroom. I had a sleep paralysis dream involving a shadow person on the ceiling. Not fun, but it’s been happening to me for years, so I'm sort of used to it. Eventually, I woke up properly and saw my daughter, wide awake and staring up at the ceiling. She looked down at me on the floor and asked, 'Did you see the ghost too?'"
2. "When my daughter was about 3, we were driving around, and she got all excited and said, 'Mommy, look at all the kids playing!' I looked where she was pointing, and it was a cemetery."
3. "My 3-year-old daughter told me I wasn’t her first mommy. I didn’t think much of it because I thought she could be referring to her grandma or the daycare provider as another mommy. A few weeks later, we were driving on the interstate, and she pointed off to the left and said, 'This is where I died before.' I got chills."
—Anonymous
4. "A few years back, when my son was 8, he ran outside, where my husband and I had been doing some yard work. He had an uneasy look on his face. After some coaxing, he finally told us he had seen a 'half of a man with a bald head floating down the upstairs hallway in a tattered yellow button-down shirt.' The detail he provided made it even more spooky! Although totally renovated and you'd never guess it, our house was built in 1898."
—Anonymous
5. "My daughter was sick with the flu when she was about 5 years old. I went to check on her while she was sleeping, and she woke up a little bit, so I said, 'Hey honey, do you need anything?' She replied, 'No, Mom. Your mommy Trudy is watching and taking care of me right now.' My mom passed away six years before she was born! And that was her name."
—Anonymous
6. "When my daughter was about 6, we were visiting my mother's home, where there was a very large mirror in the room that had been mine as a child. It was now a guest room, and my daughter had been put to bed there. Within 15 minutes of putting her to sleep, she came running back down the hall to say, 'Grandpa and another old lady are in the mirror, and they're talking about me!' My father and his mother (she confirmed the old lady by viewing a family album) had both passed years before my daughter was born. She went on to say that they were saying she was prettier than they had imagined. Totally freaked out every adult in the house!"
—Anonymous
7. "You're not my first mom. My first mom died in a fire."
—Anonymous
8. "When my daughter was 2, we were driving when she randomly said, 'I used to live on a farm and have horses and a dog. But, then I died, and now I’m here.' The really weird thing is that she has gravitated toward horseback riding, and is actually really good at it."
9. "My mom told me that once, when I was around 4, she got a painting at a thrift shop. It was a vase of flowers. She was weirdly intrigued by it. When she took it home, I stared at it, and she asked what was wrong. I told her that I was thinking about how to comfort the boy that was crying in the painting, since he couldn’t hear me, or us. Mom was confused. There was no boy in the painting. It was just a vase. Turns out the painting was made for a little boy. The frame had 'For Willy, resting peacefully. 1976–1982,' written inside of it. We looked at the painting and realized that the vase holding the flowers was shaped like a typical urn. We put the pieces together, and guessed that the boy I talked about those years ago was probably the person inside the urn. That, or the painting was done with paint mixed with the boy’s ashes. Either way, it was creepy. The painting is still in her home to this day."
10. "My child did not like walking past a local church because he said that there were dead people in the basement. He had never been to a church before, nor did he ever like going to one."
—Anonymous
11. "Recently, my friend woke up in the middle of the night to find his 3-year-old son standing right next to the bed, staring into his eyes, and whispering, 'Daddy, why does the dark want you?' Not sure he got much more sleep that night."
12. "Growing up, I visited my grandparents' farm every weekend, where they had acres of walnut trees. One night, as we were leaving, I told my mom that I didn't like the people in the trees because they wouldn't stop staring."
13. "We were in the car, and my 2-year-old said, 'I see him! He was hit by car!' We were on the way to the funeral home for my father, who had just passed away in a motorcycle accident. His death is still under investigation, but it is believed that he was hit and killed by a car. I had not talked about the accident to him or around him. Spooked me to my core."
—Anonymous
14. "When I was pregnant, my father was seriously ill and in the ICU for a period of time. I was BARELY pregnant when this happened. My father became sicker throughout my pregnancy with heart failure. When my son was a month old, my dad had two heart valves replaced and almost died in the operation. He made an amazing recovery, and he and my son became incredibly close. One day, they were out for a drive when my son was 3, and they drove by the hospital where my dad had been in the ICU. My son pointed at the hospital, looked at my dad, and said, 'That’s where you stayed with the doctors to make you better, right?' My dad said he nearly crashed the car. No one had spoken to my son about what had happened to my dad, or pointed out the hospital/who stayed there. We were freaked out. My son has definitely seen some things and has known other things he shouldn’t have. He’s 16 in two weeks and still weirds me out by knowing things he 'shouldn't.'"
15. "My daughter was born after my mother-in-law had passed. We had photos of her around the house. When she was old enough to speak, around 2 or 3, we showed her a picture of her nana and said, 'This is nana Barbie.' She replied with, 'I know nana Barbie. I met her in heaven.' Needless to say, we were both speechless."
—Anonymous
16. "My daughter talks in her sleep. I once woke up to her whispering, 'I see them,' in her sleep."
17. "When he was 3, my son would sometimes tell me not to enter his room. He would point at the corner of the ceiling and say, 'Be careful, or the baby is going to get you!'"
—Anonymous
18. "My nephew was in the hospital for a year after he was born. He's always been the quiet one. When he was around 10, I was sleeping on my mom's couch, and he came downstairs. He laid on the other end of the couch and said, 'There are dead people in the house.' He said it so calmly and matter-of-factly. Then, he went back upstairs and went to bed. The house was built by my stepdad, and the only thing close to a dead person was his dad, who died in my car as they pulled into the driveway."
19. "My sister predicted the 2017 Washington train derailment. She was 5 at the time, and she'd had dreams that sort of came true before. This time, she woke up screaming about a train coming through the house with dead people. We woke up, and it was on the news."
—Anonymous
20. "When driving my 7-year-old daughter home from school, she said, 'Daddy, we should move to Alaska.' I asked why, and she said, 'Because it's easier to hide the bodies there.'"
—Anonymous
21. "Thirty years ago, when we moved into a house, I heard my son say, 'It's our house now. You can leave.' He is special needs and can and does talk to 'dead' people."
—Anonymous
22. "My 3-year-old granddaughter went over to my daughter's in-law's house, for the first time, and stood looking at their fish in the aquarium. She pointed at a particular fish and said, 'That fish is going to die.' My daughter asked her why she said that, and she replied, 'I see the X's in its eyes.' They laughed it off, but, the next day, that fish was dead."
—Anonymous
23. "When my daughter was about 3, I said to her, 'You are so wonderful. I'm happy to be your mommy.' She said, 'Thanks. You were supposed to get a kid named Bruno, but I pushed him out of the way and took his place.'"
—Anonymous
24. "My mom, to this day, tells the story of the night she woke up when I was around 4 and she found me in the kitchen standing and staring at the refrigerator saying, 'Shhh.' When she asked me what I was doing, I told her that I couldn't sleep because of the baby crying behind the refrigerator."
—Anonymous
25. "It wasn't so much what she said, as it was what she did. When my daughter was about 4 years old, I heard her talking in her sleep. I got up to check up on her and to 'wake' her and ask if she had to use the restroom. She shook her head yes, so I took her into the bathroom. I knew she was still asleep even though she was going through the motions because her eyes were glazed over and had a blank look. She sat down to use the restroom, then slowly started rocking forward and backward. Weird? Yeah, but whatever. Then, she slowly started creepily laughing. I asked her if everything was okay. She continued to rock and laugh."
"I tried a few more times to get her to talk to me, and she continued to laugh and rock. Finally, I asked her, 'What's so funny?' The rocking came to an abrupt stop; she slowly raised her head and eyes to 'look' at me (while her eyes were still glazed over), and said, 'You are.' Then she went back to rocking and laughing. I was done at that point, so I asked her if she was done and took her right back to bed. Took me a little while to fall back asleep."
—Anonymous
26. "My little sister and I have a 13-year age gap. As a toddler, she never liked sleeping in her own bed and always insisted on sleeping in bed with my parents. I suffered from severe separation anxiety when I was younger, so I decided to ask why she didn't like sleeping in her bed, thinking it may be separation anxiety and that maybe I could help her. Her response caught me off guard. She said she didn't like to sleep in her room because of 'the lady.' The previous owner of our house was an elderly woman who had passed away in the home. A couple years later, we moved out of that house, and my sister was able to start sleeping in her own bed at night. It's been about 10 years since then, and I mentioned this story to my sister recently. She looked horrified and said she didn't remember that at all."
—Anonymous
27. "When I was 15, I babysat for my mom's friend. Her daughter was maybe 6 at the time, and she had been in bed for about an hour. Suddenly she called for me, so I ran to her bedroom to see what was wrong. She asked me, 'Who's here?' I just looked at her confused and said, 'No one.' Then she asked me, 'Well, who knocked?' I had been watching TV in the front room the whole time, and there was definitely no knock."
28. "We were renting an old house where the main bedroom was the old garage, and it was off of the living room. My son, 4, was sitting in the recliner and started waving and smiling. I asked him what he was doing, and he said he was waving at the little girl sitting on my bed. The light was off. We sat on the opposite side of the room the rest of the night so we couldn't see in there. LOL."
—Anonymous
29. "My son was about 3. The sun had just set, and we walked in the back patio doors when he pointed and asked, 'Who is that?' Then, he said a man went up the stairs. Thinking there was someone in the house, I shoved him back outside and ran around looking. There was no one. Several weeks later, we were looking through a photo album, and he pointed at a man and said, 'That's the man on the stairs.' It was my dad. He had passed away five years before my son was born."
—Anonymous
30. "As a teenager, I was babysitting my niece at my sister's house. Her house was in the middle of a field with nothing for as far as the eye could see. My niece and I were in the living room sitting on the sofa when she looked down the long dark hallway and said, 'Look at that little boy.' Needless to say, I turned all the lights on, and we sat together until my sister and her husband got back."
—Anonymous
31. "My mum told me that one day, when I was little, she was watching me play in my crib. It was getting kinda late, so she came over to put me to bed. When I refused to budge, she asked me why. Supposedly, I replied, 'The shadow kids still want to play with me.' My mum nearly crapped herself and kept an eye on me for a while after that."
—Anonymous
32. "Not my kid, thankfully, but a kid I was babysitting as a young teenager. I had just put him in bed for the night, and about 10 minutes later, he came out and told me, 'I can't sleep. My brother won't leave me alone.' His brother had died years earlier as a baby. To make matters worse, as soon as he told me why he couldn't sleep, a black cat that did NOT belong to the family jumped in through the open, broken-screened window. I never babysat for that family again!"
—Anonymous
I'm speechless. 😮 Has your kid ever said something that sent a chill up your spine? Tell us in the comments. 👀
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.