20 Parents Talk About Their Child’s Terrifying ‘Imaginary Friend’

1. What About Bob?

My daughter started saying “Bob” before she learned how to say “mama” or “dada.” She would say it all the time at random times. One time I was in the nursery rocking her to sleep when she said it and so I asked, “Who’s Bob?” She pointed up at the corner of the ceiling behind me.

AlexGeekSpeak

2. The 3 am Secret Mommy

A few years ago, my niece kept telling her Mom about her “Secret Mommy” who lives in the corner of her bedroom, only comes out at night when no one but her is up, and talks to her. The whole family was terrified until they figured out it was actually an old alarm clock in the room set to a talk radio station that went off at 3 am every night. 😅

savanners13

3. But He’s a Nice Monster

My wife and I were sitting for our nephew. He kept coming downstairs because there was a monster under his bed. So I marched upstairs grabbed the monster from under the bed, dragged it downstairs, opened the door and threw it out into the night.

Nephew burst into tears and was inconsolable because that was the nice monster and not the nasty monster.

So 11pm on a dark Saturday night and I am crawling around a damn wet garden looking for an imaginary monster and trying to apologise so my nephew could go to sleep!

Magnus_40

4. Mr. Nobody

Mr. Nobody.

He started as the person the kids would blame if one of them forgot to flush the toilet. And then his mythology evolved. For the record, all of this was concieved by 3 of my kids who at the time were 6 5, and 3:

Mr Nobody has no eyes, no teeth, no tongue and no nose. He doesn’t wear pants and leaves the used toilet paper between his butt cheeks so you can tell where he is by his smell. He doesn’t wear a shirt, but has a pocket cut into his skin where he keeps the key to our house. He can be invisible. He had a beard since he was a baby. He bites off his fingernails and then drips blood where he walks.

A friend of mine drew him at the time: https://imgur.com/D0KX2xp.jpg

Thankfully, been a few years since Mr Nobody has been in our house now.

brewtality

5. Just Chatting With Grammy

Heard my 3 year old son talking up a storm in his room, pausing as if his listening to another person answer him. No one was with him so I asked who he was talking to and he said “grammy”, she came for a visit. Grammy was my husband’s grandmother who died in our house 3 years before our son was born. We figured she just wanted to spend some time with him. She stayed around for a couple months then he never saw her again.

MotherofGiGi

6. Grandma to the Rescue

When my daughter was small, she used to ask me to tie her wardrobe handles together at night so ‘the dragon face lady can’t get out’

After a while she stopped asking and said a different lady came and now it was OK. The lady she described was my grandmother who died when my daughter was 4 months old.

LadyMirkwood

7. Seeing Things

In the past I have seen things out of the corner of my eye and glance to see nothing there… of course that’s just my eyes being weird and I stopped paying attention to those things. Well, my daughter is just a toddler and I had her sitting in my lap reading a book. I see something in the corner of my eye as usual and my daughter quick looks over there. She then stares wide-eyed at nothing and watches it cross through the room. This has happened THREE TIMES. She’s not at the point to where she can communicate what she is looking at but we are pretty close. If it happens again I’ll ask her what she sees.

TheW83

8. Lifelong Guardians

Reminds me of a close friend of mine. Almost died as a baby(pneumonia) or did i can’t remember completely. But his whole life he claims to have guardians. To this day, he’s 31. Anyway, when he was little there was always a tall man, dressed in black with a top hat, smoked a cigar, sat at the foot of his bed. He could smell the cigar smoke apparently. Told his parents many times who shrugged it off as kid stuff. One day flipping through old photo albums, he stops and points to a picture of a man who’s resemblance is uncanny. Here it’s a great great grandpa on his dad’s side. Could be a coincidence but interesting either way.

CaptainHindsight218

9. Through the Looking Glass

My daughter used to talk to the man and woman in the mirror when she was smaller at first I thought she was talking to her own reflection but soon after she would start to draw them.. One night she climbed into bed with me crying cause the man and woman had climbed out of the mirror and were sitting at the end of her bed talking to her.

Shes 7 now and has no recollection of this but my god it still freaks me out.

RevolutionaryTrip951

10. Tragic Ending to Imaginary Friends

I’m not the parent but it’s about my brother. When we were young he went through imaginary friends pretty frequently. Not all that weird, except for why he stopped talking about the previous one. To this day it still freaks our entire family out. He would have an imaginary friend for a few months and talk about them non stop. Then after a while usually after waking up in the morning he would tell us how in his dream they had died in a plane crash, or a car accident, or a shooting, or some other kind of tragic event like that, sometimes even naming the place in the world it happened. Without fail that night while watching the news there would be a story about some kind of tragic event having taken place the night before and it almost always matched the description of the death of his imaginary friend. The weird and creepy part is that the only tv we had was in our parents bedroom that was locked at night, and internet wasn’t a thing back then, and he was so young that he was always at home with my mom and the other kids so there was no way for him to have heard it from somewhere else. To this day we have no idea what was happening with that.

dman2316

11. Leave the Door Open

Youngest daughter one time asked us to keep our bedroom door open because her imaginary friend couldn’t open doors. We laughed it off that she was just afraid and wanted to be able to see us or know we were home if she woke up in the middle of the night. Next day I casually asked what her friend did at night and she said she liked to stand at the end of our bed and watch us sleep. Creep alert #1. We asked how often she speaks with her – and she said she really only likes to talk and come out at night. Creep alert #2….We asked – can you draw a picture of her? She did – if someone can advise how to attach it I can but super creepy drawing and we asked what was up with her smile and she said she had really sharp teeth and a lump on her head. Anyways – we eventually got a dog; and she told us her friend didn’t like the dog because he stared at her at night….Long story short, we eventually moved, her friend didn’t come with us but daughter said she’d probably find us…that was 8 years ago…haven’t heard about her since we moved. We moved one more time since..I’m hoping she is lost.

EDIT Pic added

PIC: https://imgur.com/a/Fx5J3Kz

Open_Currency1947

12. Arlo Tells the Truth

So my 3 year old started talking about her friend “Arlo” telling us stuff she did that was funny. We assumed she was talking about a friend of hers from school and made up stories about them playing together. Nothing alarming or weird, pretty much how she talked about the other little kids in her head start class. We came to find out that in fact that is no Arlo in her school. Still maybe she’s just being lazy pronouncing a name or something. When we asked her about it she pretty much said Arlo doesn’t go to school. So that was weird but we figured, whatever she just had a active imagination.

It got hot outside around this time and we live a couple houses down the street from the local beach. A new ice cream guy started hitting the beach religiously like 6 times a day, I get it that’s obviously a guaranteed couple sales every time he swings through.

Our daughter really liked the music and wanted to know why he played music, and obviously not wanting to have to listen to her beg for ice cream six times a day all summer long we told her that he’s just the music man and he comes by to play music.

This was right when lockdown was in full effect in our area and other then going to the lake there wasn’t much to do. Her school stopped, and we honestly didn’t go outside beyond our yard or the grocery store and work for most of the summer. So she hasn’t hung out with many kids in the past couple weeks.

Anyway, one day she hears the ice cream guy come to the park and all excitedly tells me that that’s not a music man he’s a ice cream man and he sells ice cream, Arlo told me that you lied and said he was a music man dad. So that was kind of creepy. We asked where Arlo lives and she told us she lives in her closet.

And that was the last time I ever asked more information about Arlo.

WhiskeyDabber67

13. Ghost Poop

My daughter was afraid of ghosts in her room. I tried to use logic that if they were there they must use energy so had to eat and therefore had to poop. And since we’ve never seen any ghost poop in the house, we must be free of ghosts.

A couple days later, my 4 year old daughter came up to me and opened her tiny hand. She said look dad ghost poop.

It was a styrofoam packing peanut.

blscratch

14. Hot Boy’s Revenge

Hot Boy-

My cousin growing up had an imaginary friend she named Hot Boy. My aunt and uncle didn’t think much of it until things like tools, kitchen appliances and various random small items would go missing and when they asked the kids what happened to them, my cousin would always blame Hot Boy. Well, as time went on this continued and it got worse. My cousin would be constantly getting into trouble in school, hurting other kids, and would blame Hot Boy. She was even noticed during recess off in the distance away from the other kids appearing to be talking to herself.

Fast forward about 6 or so months. My uncle was getting annoyed with Hot Boy and really was about to the last straw. He “threw” Hot Boy out the second story window. My cousin was completely distraught and told him that Hot Boy would have his revenge. The next morning my uncle was going out to his truck to go to work and all the tires were slashed on his truck. Obviously upset, he went inside to ask the girls what happened and who did it. My cousin without hesitation said “Hot Boy got his revenge daddy.”

Fast forward another 2-3 months. One summer night their house had caught on fire and burned to the ground. Luckily, they all survived but everything they owned was lost to the fire. The state fire Marshall’s office could not pin point the cause of the fire. The next day the local paper made it front page story with a photo of the house on fire. My aunt and uncle noticed when taking a close look at the photo that amongst the flames in the photo there were faces they could see. They never did say they really thought it was Hot Boy who may have started the fire, and my cousin denies he ever existed to this day. But, one could leave it up to their imagination I suppose.

MisterDarkSiide

15. A Mother’s Love is Never Ending

Once when I was trying to get my infant son to sleep, and crying because he was colicky and crying (and I had undiagnosed postpartum depression), I was begging for some help. I missed my mom who had died months earlier, she always could make me feel better. All of a sudden I felt a wave of warmth and love rush over me, similar to how a really good hug makes me feel. My son and I both stopped crying. It was like my mom returned to comfort me during a really low point, to help me feel better. I can imagine her heart breaking from the “other side”, using all her strength to reach out and comfort her adult daughter in the way that only moms can.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share that story. I must go get tissues now.

Happy_Camper45

16. Banjo the Invisible Dog

My son has an imaginary dog called Banjo. The creepy thing is that Banjo was the name of our family dog a long time ago when I was still a pre-teen. We lived on a farm close to a river. One day there was a flash flood and my brother was trapped on a rocky hill with raging flooding river all around him and farm animals could be seen being swept away by the current. Our dog Banjo unfortunately jumped in the river to save my brother but got carried away by the current and we never saw him again.

After 11 hours the water was safe enough for a boat to collect my brother and he was beside himself with sadness over what happened to Banjo.

My brother sadly died after being hit by a car while cycling 2 years later when he was 13.

I never told my son about Banjo, so I was very shocked when he began interacting with this invisible dog called Banjo. Is it just coincidence? Or is it the spirit of my long dead brother or the spirit of the long dead Banjo who is visiting my new family?

_Bailey_Jay_

17. Death Threat

One day when my kid was four, he was asleep and I was carrying him into the house from the car. He opened his eyes, looked right at me, and said, “he’s going to kill us all.” And then he went back to sleep. Creepy as fuck.

Kahzgul

18. The Boy

I have a few but the most recent was when I finished bathing my 3 year old. I was putting her clothes on when she said the boy went into the bedroom already, and pointed to my open bedroom door.

I asked who the boy was. She said it was her friend. I left it at that and forgot about it. A few days later I walked out of the kitchen and saw a child dash through to our bedroom, from the corner of my eyes. My daughter was in day care.

Yeah, it felt pretty freaky. I was thinking I must have hallucinated.I did the only thing I could think of…

I walked to the room entrance and said, “We’re a good family, and our daughter is a very good girl. Try not to scare her, we’re all friendly.”

Then I turned on all the lights, because fuck that shit scared me silly.

Eltharion-the-Grim

19. Tommy With the Orange Hair

My (at the time) step daughter was about 3 when she started getting out of her toddler bed and playing with a “boy” in the middle of the night. This happened often for about a year. She was finally able to articulate what he looked like to us and said he “had orange hair and a bandaid on his eye and his name was Tommy”. When we asked her why he had a bandage on his eye she said “his mommy poked it”! Thankfully we moved a few months later. Not because of Tommy but it was definitely good timing! lol

Its_Lissy

20. Games With the Little Girl

Not a parent but when my grandparents moved out of their old house, which we all had an incling was haunted, my grandmother asked my 7 year old cousin what she would miss most about the old house. Her response? “I’ll miss the little girl that would play games with me in my bedroom at night time”. We didn’t have another little girl in the family. Quite possibly the creepiest thing I’ve heard from a child first hand.

Riioott__