Kids say the darndest things...and sometimes they also say the creepiest things, too. So redditor u/JrlTan asked, "Parents of Reddit, what is the scariest thing your child said to you or to someone?" Here's how people responded, and I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry about some of these.
Note: Some submissions were pulled from BuzzFeed Community users' comments here, here, and here.
1. "When my now-13-year-old daughter was 3 years old, she told me that she was 'borned by the beach.' When I explained that she was, in fact, born in a hospital and I distinctly remember being there, she said, 'No, Momma. I was borned before, to my momma before you.'"
2. "'Mummy, the invisible man wants to come into your bedroom.' ABSOLUTELY NOT."
3. "Will the man in the attic come with us when we move?"
4. "Not my kid, thankfully, but a kid I babysat 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. I never babysat for that family again!"
—Anonymous
5. "When my eldest son was almost 2, he would occasionally cry out at night. Sometimes he would be hysterical and he would say 'the mean old lady' was scaring him. After this had happened several times, I was holding him one night, trying to soothe him, and I said, 'That old lady better watch out or she'll have to deal with me.' He stopped crying suddenly and leaned back from my shoulder so he could look me dead in the face. He said, 'She’s not afraid of you, Mommy.' This was 23 years ago, and I still get goosebumps thinking about it."
6. "When my baby was small, I remember telling him about how he used to be in my belly. He stopped me and said, 'Oh yeah, I remember that, it was dark in there.' Excuse me, what?!"
7. "I cut my foot on a piece of broken glass, and my kid (who was 5 at the time) said, 'Don't clean it up! I can use your blood for painting!'"
8. "I was putting my 2-year-old niece to bed while babysitting one night when she looked over my shoulder and said, 'Who's that?' I looked behind me and asked, 'Who?' She responded, 'The man behind you. He was with you in the kitchen, too.' We were the only ones in the house. I spent the rest of the evening in the living room on the one chair with its back to the wall, glancing around nervously."
9. "My nephew was in the hospital for a year after he was born. He's always been the quiet one. I was sleeping over one night when he was around 10 years old, and he came downstairs. He went to lie down on the other end of the couch next to me and then 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."
10. "When my daughter was 3, she came home from preschool one day, and her demeanor changed the minute we came home. She became very withdrawn and looked very upset. I asked her what was wrong, and she said, 'The angel on the roof is angry with us.' 😳"
11. "When my brother was 4, he said to my mom, 'You should go see Granddad at the hospital because his head hurts from the car crash.' My mom told him that Granddad was fine and he didn't even drive. Fifteen minutes later, the phone rang. It was my nan telling Mom that Granddad was in the hospital after his taxicab got into a crash."
12. "My adorably innocent 3-year-old once lovingly told me, 'Mommy, when you die, I’m going to keep your body so I can pet your hair.' He was petting my hair at that very moment..."
13. "My friends were across the country visiting family with their kid, and they were out for a drive. The 4-year-old pointed down an old, overgrown dirt road and said, 'That's where I used to go to school.' My friend mentioned the comment to her brother the next day when they drove by, and he told her there actually was an old schoolhouse there from the 1800s."
14. "According to my mother, when my sister was a baby, she would stop playing with her toys and randomly look at the wall and laugh. She would also move her head slowly, as if she was watching someone carefully move across the room."
15. "I nannied for a little boy when he was 2 to 4 years old, and he had lots of creepy little stories. The one I remember most went something like this: 'Before Mama was my Mama, I had a different mama. We went for a walk on the water. I went through the water, and I died!' We live in the Pacific Northwest, and he had no concept of being able to walk on frozen water. That one freaked out me and his mama big time."
16. "A few months after my mom passed, my daughter was sitting in the TV room. She looked down the hall, and I could tell something had caught her eye. She got up and said, 'Yaya is in her room,' walked into my mom's room, and shut the door. I could hear my daughter talking and laughing through the door. I was equally scared and hopeful that I might hear my mom, too, but I didn't."
17. "One night while I was tucking my kids in, my then-4-year-old said, 'Mommy, when you die, I’m going to keep your bones.' My then-6-year-old added, “Ooh! We could make a wind chime!" It was the creepiest and also the sweetest thing my kids have said to me."
18. "A few weeks after my son turned 2, he said to me, 'Look, the smoke dissipates.' This is not a word we use in our daily vernacular, so I asked him what it meant. 'It disappears,' he said. I was impressed and asked him where he learned that word. He replied, 'When I was an adult.' I laughed and asked when he was an adult. Without missing a beat, he answered, 'Before I was born.'"
19. "Driving by a cemetery when my kid was about 3 years old, he said, 'Who are all the people standing around there?' There was no one standing anywhere in the cemetery that I could see."
20. "One night before bed, my 4-year-old daughter asked if she could still see with her hands while holding them if she took out her eyeballs. I was speechless and told her we should not take out our eyeballs. That was not a sentence I was ever prepared to have to say."
21. "One time, my son woke me up in the dead of my sleep at 2 a.m. and said, 'They are coming,' while giving me that creepy freaking stare. Turns out he was also fully asleep."
22. "My 5-year-old has talked about his 'first family' for years. He will randomly be doing something that must trigger a memory of them. He's always been consistent in his story. He says that one day, he got sick and then came to live with us. He talks less about them the older he gets, but it's always fascinating to me when he brings them up."
—mabd
23. "The day my grandmother went into a coma, my youngest sister (who was 4 at the time and completely unaware that our grandma was in the hospital) got home from school and said Grandma came to school with her. For the next two weeks, she said that every day, my grandmother would visit her at school for varying amounts of time, and she would always walk out the door. One Wednesday, my sister came home from school upset and told my mother that Grandma had stood up and then disappeared completely. A few hours later, my mother got the call that my grandmother had, in fact, passed away."
24. And finally, "My 5-year-old once asked me, 'If I die, will I be a baby again?' Truly had no idea how to answer that one..."
What is the most alarming, creepiest, or jaw-dropping thing your child has ever said? Tell us in the comments. If you'd rather stay anonymous, just drop your response into this Google form.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.