Last week, I shared this Twitter thread about creepy things kids have said to their parents.
What’s the eeriest thing a child has ever said to you? When my daughter was around 4-5, she calmly insisted that she had once been married to a man named Brad Huffington. When we asked what had happened to him she replied with a note of sadness, “He was lost at sea.”
In the comments on that post, y'all shared so many more spooky stories that I decided we had to go for round 2!
Here are 17 more chilling and low-key disturbing things children have said, from telling their parents they died in a building fire to predicting a family member's death:
1. "Our 3-year-old daughter was playing happily. She suddenly stopped and said, 'The last time I was here, I was sitting by the river and some men came and threw me in. I died.' She then went on playing and has no recollection of this incident. It was chilling."
2. "In my early 20s, I worked at a daycare. One of the 2-year-olds started randomly approaching myself and the other staff, and would simply say 'baby ghost.' This occurred every other day for a week or two. One day when his mom came to pick him up, I told her what he was saying and asked if this was from a TV show or book at home. The mom said no but he had been saying it at home too, and she thought it was from something at daycare. We were both slightly freaked out. A few weeks later, the mom learned she was pregnant. Could have been a coincidence, but I can't help but wonder if he predicted the pregnancy or was the baby contacting their brother?"
"It made me ponder an interesting thought. When we think of ghosts, we think of the ghosts of people who have died. But is it possible that there are ghosts of people yet to be born?"
3. "We were driving into the city when my (at the time) 3-year-old pointed out the very tall skyscrapers and said, 'I used to live in a tall building like that. I had a lot of nice stuff but it burned up. I was alone there. I didn't have a family and now I have a family.' He did this several times [with the] same exact story. We are a big family and he adores his siblings with extra gusto."
4. "We live 300+ miles from my parents so our son only saw them twice a year at most. He did talk to them on the phone as much as a child under 4 could. My dad died three weeks before our son's fourth birthday. We were all at the funeral and our son sang 'Twinkle Twinkle' to my dad as he 'slept' in the casket at the viewing. Several weeks later, I got my son up for preschool. He was extra tired. I asked him why he was tired and he said, 'I'm tired because I was up all night playing games with Grandpa.' He went on to tell me they played Chutes and Ladders and Candyland, which we had at home. It made me cry both sad and happy tears. I asked him, 'Next time Grandpa stops by, please tell him I said hi.' He promised he would but the subject never came up again."
5. "When my niece was about 2 and a half, she told her dad on the way to daycare that they forgot the diaper bag for her sister [who was] about 6 months old. My brother-in-law turned around to go back home for the bag. On the way back to daycare, there was a fatal accident involving both the cars that were originally ahead and behind him. He asked her why she told him about the bag. Her answer? The little girl in the front seat told her. Freaked us the F out!"
6. "According to my dad, when I was 13, my grandfather was in the hospital with liver problems. My dad was on the phone with him one day to get an update and see how he was doing. I walked up to my dad and he said I told him to call his dad back and say goodbye to him because he was going to be dead in two weeks. Years later, I asked my dad if I really did that. My dad said that I really did, and that [my grandpa] died two weeks later of cirrhosis of the liver. I don’t know how or why, but somehow I knew he was going to die. According to my dad, I was so freaked out by it that I didn’t go to his funeral."
7. "My youngest (she's 28 now) used to be scared to go upstairs alone, even during the day. We had one bathroom upstairs. She would wait for anyone else to go up, then she'd race upstairs to the bathroom. I finally got her to tell me why she was so scared of the upstairs, even in daylight. She told me this scary old witch lady would appear in/near their closet (my daughters shared a room). She described her 'crazy hair,' her 'claw hands,' and how small and hunched over she was."
8. "The day my grandmother went into a coma, my youngest sister (who was 4 at the time and completely unaware that Grandma was in hospital) got home from school and said Grandma came to school with her and sat on a desk near the window. For the next two weeks, every day my grandmother would come visit 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 waved, and then disappeared completely. My sister knew that she wasn’t coming back. A few hours later, my mother got the call that my grandmother had in fact passed away."
9. "My son used to talk to and about German soldiers while he was alone in his room when he was 3."
10. "When my daughter was about 2 and a half, we moved into an old home that was used for the 'help' of the owners of a mansion next door. We were getting in the car one day when she looks over in the neighbors' backyard and yells 'hi' while waving. I looked over and saw no one there, so I asked whom she was waving at. She said 'the boys picking apples.' There was one tree but it wasn’t an apple tree, nor was there anyone there. But she kept insisting they were. I met the person who lived in that house and asked her if she had any sons. She said no so I told her the story of what had happened. She said, 'That’s strange. We just had an apple tree cut down that has been there for over 100 years.'"
"The waving at the invisible apple pickers happened a few more times after. In the same house, my daughter said there was a family living there with us: parents and their daughter. They said that they had died in a car accident. At dinner one night, she said, 'They’re right there. Don’t you see them?' while pointing at nothing in the kitchen. I played along with it but before long my daughter would say she was playing with the little girl of the family (my daughter said her name was Izzy). Izzy would ride with us in the car and play with my daughter when we were at home.
What made me move was when one night, my daughter was in the bathtub and let out a terrifying scream. I had just gone to grab her towel. I ran in and asked her what was wrong and she said, 'The mean man sitting on the floor is watching me take a bath and is making a mean face,' while pointing at nothing. From that point on, she wouldn’t even walk past the bathroom without looking inside first to see if the 'mean man' was there. This made nighttime potty training virtually impossible! We lived there about a year and a half and then moved."
11. "Some friends of mine adopted a little girl. A year later, when she was 5, I was riding in their car on the way back from the movies. We stopped at a light by a cemetery, when suddenly the girl said, 'Bye Gehenna.' Her mom asked who Gehenna was. The little girl said, 'She’s my friend,' then pointed at the cemetery and said, 'She lives there!' I never rode in a car with that child ever again."
12. "My wife and I visited our 3-year-old nephew in the hospital. When we were leaving, he said goodbye to us and Betty. Betty was my mother who died before I met my wife and we never discussed her in front of him. The other fascinating part: My nephew — who is from my wife's side of the family — looks almost like my oldest brother's twin when he was that age."
13. "We were at our friends’ home and it hadn’t been very long since they had moved in. While moving, they found a creepy dollhouse in the attic. Nothing too crazy. Just kinda weird. During our stay, my 2-year-old daughter fell out of bed. The next morning, my husband jokingly asked her, 'Did Mommy push you out of bed?' She matter-of-factly said, 'No, the monster pulled me out of bed.' After a beat, my husband asked her what the monster's name was. She calmly said 'Timothy.' We do not know a Timothy and don’t know where she would have heard that name. She also looked to the ceiling when she said it."
14. "My grandmother and great-grandmother lived next to my mom. One day, we were visiting them and the whole time we were there, my son was chattering and playing with something. He was 4 at the time. As we were leaving my great-grandmother's room, he starts waving and says, 'Bye Gordon! Bye Gordon!' Gordon was the name of my great-grandmother's son, who had died 70 years earlier at the age of 4."
15. "When my daughter was 3 or 4 years old, she used to have a recurring dream. She was on a beach and a man was sitting on top of her and choking her with a stick pressed up against her throat. She had never seen anything violent on TV and the pediatrician drew a blank. The psychologist we took her to couldn’t explain it either and mentioned something about a past life. My daughter is 24 now. She vaguely remembers the dreams but says she can still feel the terror when she thinks about it."
16. "A few months ago, I was staying at my sister’s house. The first night I was there, I woke up in the middle of the night because I felt like I couldn’t breathe. It was like something was blocking my mouth. Once I was finally fully awake, it subsided and I was able to fall back asleep. The next morning, I went into the dining room for breakfast and my 7-year-old nephew says, 'Hey Auntie, who was the little boy who went into your room last night with no eyes?'"
17. And finally, "My (now) 5-year-old has talked about his 'first family' for years! He will randomly be doing something and it must trigger a memory of them. He's always been consistent of who was in his family and says 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!"
