Hi, first thread here. Inspired by these two Reddit threads; I wanted to hear tales of the weird when it comes to kids, whether it be yours or others. A tale about your younger self would also suffice and maybe make us all laugh, shutter with fear, or :dubious:. So I ask again StraighDope: “What is one of the most creepiest/Frightening things you’re kid, other kids, or your younger self have done or said?”
If I put this in the wrong place, a mod can move this.
Mentioned it before -
Back in the late 1950s while my Dad was duty stationed in Germany and my mother was living in one of the family houses [My GreatGrandfather built 3 houses - one for each son and one for he and my maiden ‘aunt’ [actually my great aunt, she simply never married.] She had gone next door to go out to Sunday dinner with my Grandparents and one uncle and aunt and came home after dark. Every single light in the house attic to basement was turned on. She had locked the place before leaving for dinner. They called the cops and had them go through the place but it was totally empty and nothing had been stolen.
And when I was young I had an imaginary friend. We had just come back from Germany and my Dad had 30 days leave to move us all back into the family house. So here I am, first time in the area and brand new to the US [we had come for the occasional vacation but tended to go to the summer house in Canada more than not.] Mom and the nuns at the preschool I was going to before the regular school year was going to start caught me talking and playing with an imaginary friend so they dd the typical 1960s thing and shipped me off to a child psychologist. After several sessions both at home and in his office he determined one rather upsetting thing. My imaginary playmate was an older man of about 70, with a very specific birthmark on the side of his face. It happened to be my great grandfather. I had also never seen any picture of him, nor heard them discussing him as he had been dead for about 80 years. <shrug> I really don’t remember anything about it, I was discouraged from playing with him by arranging LOTS of time playing with assorted cousins. I did actually end up seeing a picture of him in about 1973 when we visited my grandparent at their winter home in Florida [and we got to go to this new amusement park WOOT! ]
Fairly mild. Driving past the cemetery, Miss Five pipes up “Mum, I want pink flowers on me when I’m in there”.
Some mornings, there isn’t enough coffee in the world.
Night time in our big Edwardian house. Waking from my usual nightmares I went to my parents room and stood hesitantly in the doorway. The night light cast my shadow across the far wall, taller than me, wearing a fedora…I was looking at my mothers back but I knew she saw the shadow and was going to
SCREAM
but it was me when she whipped around to see who it was.
I still remember a few days before one Christmas (I think I was about 6 or 7) … where everyone was gathered at our house; all siblings and their spouses and boyfriends. It was a good dinner, but everything seemed so forced and tense.
About once an hour, a police car would drive down the street and some conversations would stop and pick up again afterward as people looked out the window to watch it drive by.
My parents wouldn’t tell me what was up, but eventually one of my sisters told me.
“Daddy helped put away a very dangerous man who was part of a group that refused to pay taxes. Some of the group got away and left threats that they’d shoot Daddy. That police car is driving by to make sure that they don’t.”
My aunt was a member of the County Fair Board where we lived so my siblings and I used to do volunteer work at the Fair quite a bit. One time, after a night spent at the fairgrounds, I was driving two of my brothers and my little sister home. On the way, we decided to go get some burgers first then head to the house. To get to the fast food place I had to pass by where I would normally turn off if I was driving home. There were actually two possible routes from that point - a two lane road or the highway that paralleled it. As I was driving by the turn off my little sister suddenly pointed at the highway and said “Let’s go back that way”. This was a really weird and pointless thing to say I thought at the time. I told her we hadn’t even gotten to the restaurant yet, what difference did it make which way we went home?
Anyway, after we got our food I drove back and went down the two land road like I usually did. Suddenly this other car came up beside me really fast and much too close, startling the heck out of me. I jerked the wheel to the side a bit too much and the car hit the curb. Unfortunately the curbstone was already broken at that point and it slashed both tires on that side of the car. Mom’s car. That she had just bought new tires for.
That was an unpleasant phone call. And none of us have ever forgotten that if I’d gone the way my kid sister wanted to go it wouldn’t have happened.
(A few days later one of my brothers was driving Mom’s car and did the same thing on the other side. Four ruined tires in a week. Poor Mom.)
When I was very small, maybe 3 or so, I would tell my mother things like, “Don’t you remember when we all wore long dresses, Mama? And men wore guns on their belts? Those dresses were mighty hot.” I would tell her about things that sounded like they happened in the 19th century and express amazement that she had no memories of these things.
This other story happened when we were living in Georgia, in a house on a hill in the middle of nowhere. I was about nine, I think. We had a cat that had kittens but all but two of them died. Every day I would come running home from school to coo over the tiny baby kittens (they had a nest in my closet). One day, I ran home and reached in to pick up a kitten – and my tiny baby kitten didn’t have a head. I went into hysterics. There was no one else home at the time so I frantically called on the phone until I got my brother’s then-girlfriend to pick up, and sobbed out the story to her. She tried to calm me down by telling me that sometimes mama cats kill their kittens because the kitten is in pain and the mama cat is trying to spare them the pain. Anyway, my mother came home and the kitten was buried and that was that. Strangest thing; we never found the head.
Years and years later, my mother and I were walking about the days when we lived on that house on the hill in the middle of nowhere in rural Georgia. I asked her about the headless kitten, and she turned to face me, her eyes wide and horrified. “Oh my god,” my mother said. “I thought I dreamed that.”
My nearly four year old boy creeped me out pretty good last night. I was telling him about the big party we’re having this weekend and all of the people that he knew that would be there.
He was really excited about seeing his cousins and friends but then he suddenly sits up and says “And then I’ll go get one of your big knives and mess up the whole party”.
Sooo, we had a little talk about that.
A few months ago my son and I were cuddling on his bed, which is the last step in his bedtime procedure. This was the the time of year when it got dark before his 7:30 bedtime, and the lights were all out upstairs, so we could only see by the dim light of the streetlights outside. Out of nowhere Baby Bird points over to the empty, barely visible rocking chair in the corner of the room and says “Grandma.” I said “Grandma isn’t here, she’s at home with Papa, you know that.” My two year old angel points back at the rocking chair, looks up at me with his piercing blue eyes and says “Grandma. Scary.”
I do not believe in ghosts, but I called my mom and had BirdMan call my mother in law juuuuust to make sure everyone was still breathing.
My parents told me about how, when I was about 3 (old enough to be in a big-kid bed, but barely) they came to my doorway one night to check on me and found me standing up on the bed, talking to someone. The couldn’t hear what I was saying, nor could they hear anyone answering, but they said I was definitely carrying on a conversation.
When they asked me about it the next day, I matter-of-factly told them that I was talking to “the lady in the white dress.” I said that she told me she watches over me, but that I was getting too old to see her, so she wasn’t going to be able to show herself anymore. But she assured me that she would always be there.
I don’t remember any of this, of course.
I was substitute teaching a kindergarten class when one of the students, a boy, showed me a drawing he’d made. It was vaguely bowl-shaped, and he said, “It’s a potion. It’s for the ne’er-do-wells.”
I didn’t ask him what the potion did. Or what he thought ne’er-do-wells were. To this day, I’m not sure if I should have or not.
I don’t have children, so have never experienced this, but I would imagine it’s pretty startling to wake up in the middle of the night with your child standing next to you. Mommy I need a drink of water, or I had a nightmare, or worse… a sleepwalker.
shudder
“Father, I had bad dream.”
You blink eyes and pull up on elbows. Outside amid swirling snow you see clock tower reads past three A.M.
“Devochka, do you wish to climb into bed and tell me about it?”
“No, Father.”
With such oddness you are now fully awake. You can barely make out your daughter’s pale form in the darkness of your room. “Devochka, why do you not wish to tell your father?”
“Because in my dream, Father, when I told you about the dream, the thing wearing Mother’s skin sat up.”
For a moment you can’t take your eyes off of your daughter. The covers behind you begin to shift.
You speak sharply. “Do not speak of your brother this way. See, you have woken him up. It is cold and he must stay warm however he can.” Such is life in Moscow.
Nice, Koxinga! 
About 15 years ago, friends of ours visited Mesa Verde (an ancient Pueblo site) in southwest Colorado. Their son was three years old at the time. His parents said they hadn’t previously talked about, or heard anything about, what particular areas of the ruins were used for, but when they were inside a kiva their son said, “This is where they made us pray.”
I have to believe that he saw an illustration or something that showed what kivas were used for, but it was a pretty chilling statement at the time.
That sentence will bother me for a long time.
That’s exactly what happened to my mother-in-law when my wife was little. It would be the dead of night and she would wake up and see her five year old daughter staring down at her with a blank expression, not moving. It nearly gave her a heart attack, and afterward she would make sure the bedroom door was shut. And so the next night she was awoken by the sound of the little girl scratching and clawing at the door, moaning in her sleep to be let in.
I was around 10 years old when my aunty, who lived in the country, bought a farm. My family had gathered to help her move into the new house. There was an amount of ill-will between the buyer and the sellers of the farm; some simmering disharmony that (in adult hindsight) occurs when each party to a transaction feels that they have been unfairly treated.
The former owners had come back to the farm to collect some equipment, plus an old bush-racing car. I stood with my family in the house, silently looking through the windows onto the front yard. The seller and his brothers were slowly winching the old car up onto the back of a vehicle trailer. Being a young boy, I had readily absorbed the collective ill-will of my family expressed towards the other side.
I pipe up: “I wish the cable would break.”
PING! the winch cable instantly snaps, the car crashing and sliding back down the trailer, men shouting and jumping out of the way.
In the 25ish years since I’ve been careful to save my remaining two wishes.
When my MIL was alive she was babysitting the 4 year old daughter of her sons live in long term girlfriend. The girl was angry once and shared a disturbing plan to murder her mother and my BIL with a gun she was going to steal from her biodad who is in the army. detailed plan :eek:
My MIL told her you are notmgoing to kill my son you hear, the child said ok ok just my mother will be killed ok?
Creepy and she is now a teenager and has not killed anyone as far as we know.