My daughter (at the time around 3) was in bed. She giggled, then asked if I had tickled her feet.


No. No I hadn't.

“Mommy can we sleep with the tv on? I don’t want the big people to watch us sleep again”, the night before I had a terrible nightmare that aliens were watching us sleep. It was almost like an out of body experience because I could see us in bed and my bedroom exactly how I left it that night. At first I didn’t think anything of it, until she said that and then I realized maybe it wasn’t a dream. She was only 2 at the time.

My little cousin, at about three years old, looked at us all at the family gathering and said, “you know, I went down with the ship.” Then he switched back to three year old English and started playing.

I told my mother when I was about 3 that I didn't like the lady in the basement, or that she kept trying to make me "put my hand in the wall." She asked what lady and I said from the picture and took her to the basement. Hidden away in a closet were a bunch of old photos and a weird, painted portrait, really old fashioned.

The woman was the previous owner of the house, which was not owned by her brother, our landlord. She had died in the basement while trying to do laundry, as she was advanced in age and stubborn about getting help in spite of her bad health. The portrait was apparently some family tradition, the brother had one, too, and so did his parents. A lot of her things were still in the house we were renting.

After we found the portrait, I took her to a wall and told her the hole was there. My mom moved some boxes out of the way and, sure enough, there was a hole about the size of a child's fist on the ground being covered. I still remember showing her the hole, vaguely. I also remember seeing the woman wandering around down there, in a sort of dreamlike memory kind of way. Super tiny woman, face kind of obscured by wrinkles in a way that is hard to explain because in retrospect it didn't look natural but to a kid, she just had a weird face. And wearing a white nightgown with little flowers on it.

Anyway, my mom had always been creeped out by the basement, but I played down there. I wasn't allowed to play down there anymore.

Growing up, I remembered the lady and the hole, but nothing else. And she never discussed it again. We lived there the rest of the year, then moved as soon as we could (my dad didn't believe in any of it). But it wasn't until I brought up the old lady when we were talking about the house, at 16, that my mom filled in the blanks. Which was crazy to me, because in my mind I thought the old lady who owned the house would just come over in her nightgown, and that she was just kind of a b***h about the wall hole.

She really, really wanted me to reach in there.

My niece had never met my Dad, her Grandad, as he had passed away the year before she was born.

When she was 3 years old, she pointed at the corner that his walking stick used to sit in, waved and said 'Hiya Grandad' with the biggest smile on her face.

It was the creepiest and sweetest thing I had ever seen!

My son tells me stories of "scary uncle Michael" in his bedroom at night. He says he's a grey man that looks like his uncle and he climbs on walls and calls out to him and one night he tried to eat him.

Yep, nightmare fuel.

'I don't like it here, Mommy...I want to go back to the planet I came from.' (my 3 yr old says to me, with a big sigh).

"I used to be a policeman, but then I died. I was trying to stop a burglary and the burglars were really rough with me. They were really rough with me, and then I died."

This was a four year old I used to babysit.

While changing my daughter in front of the open closet door. She kept looking around me and laughing. I asked her what was so funny. She said, "the man." To which I replied, "what man?" She then pointed at the closet and said, "the man with the snake neck." I turn around and nothing was there. I'm afraid to look into the history of my house to see if anyone hung themselves in the closet. At least she wasn't scared.