Imaginary Friend, or Ghost?
http://voices.yahoo.com/imaginary-friend-ghost-248655.html
To hear child psychologists tell it, it is not uncommon for a child to have an "imaginary friend". To hear a paranormal enthusiast or possibly even a medium tell it, your child's imaginary friend could quite possibly be a ghost!
Several years ago, when my oldest daughter was only 3, she developed an imaginary friend. As she walked through the house playing, she would often say, "Look Mama, my friend is following me". I'll admit, it was a little creepy, but I chalked it up to her fun imagination, and the fact that at the time, she was still an only child. It didn't strike me as too odd that she would "invent" someone to play with. Nevertheless, we did begin spending more time at the park after that so that she could play with real children, and before long, she stopped talking about her imaginary friend.
Fast forward 5 years, and we are now the proud parents of two children. My daughter is now 8, and our son is 2. We have just moved to a house located about five miles from Los Angeles International Airport, so that I could be closer to work, ditch my four hour per day commute, and have more time at home to spend with my children. When I say just moved, I mean just moved. As in, the night before. We pulled in with the moving truck about 9pm, and my daughter fell fast asleep in a sleeping bag in her new room soon after we arrived. Not much later, my husband, son, and I, all passed out on an air mattress in our empty bedroom.
Early the next morning, still half asleep, I heard the unmistakeable pitter-patter of toddler sized bare feet running on the carpet beside me, and then heading out the bedroom door. I jolted up, assuming of course that it had been my son. I didn't want him roaming around the house alone, as I hadn't had time yet to go through and put safety devices in the electrical outlets. Imagine my shock and confusion when I stood up and realized my son was still fast asleep on the air mattress! I checked on my daughter even though I knew those footsteps had been to little to be hers, and found her still sleeping, as well.
The reason I mentioned that little story was to give you an idea of what the following three years were like for us, living in that house. We had near daily occurrences of this sort, but that's a different story. What I really mean to tell you about, are the "friends" that my son spoke of while living there.
We had been living in that house for approximately six months before my son's vocabulary was developed enough for him to begin telling us about "the boys". He spoke of three boys, all brothers. He called them specific names, too, although it was tough to decipher what he was saying. One thing was clear, though, and that was that my son used the same last name with all of them. Over the next two and a half years, he often spoke of them. He acted as though they were sitting at the dining room table with him, he talked to them while playing in the bath, and mentioned sometimes that they had "come with us" in the car.
One time, I walked into my son's bedroom to check on him, and he was sitting on a little plastic chair, with another little chair, empty of course, positioned to face him. As I entered the room, I apparently "interrupted" a conversation my son was having with one of his little imaginary friends who was "sitting" in the chair opposite my son. Sometimes I would hear him giggling and laughing, chatting happily away with "someone", even though he was in the room alone.
As time passed, my son filled us in on even more details about these "boys". He said they were 4, 6, and 8 years old. He described their different hair colors and also described, in detail, what clothes they were "wearing". When we had lived there nearly 3 years, circumstances changed and we were planning another move. It was around this time, approximately 2 months before leaving this house, that my son decided to tell me an amazing story about these boys.
My son, 5 years old at this point in time, was not the type to make up stories,ever. He did not pretend to be running through castles battling knights and dragons, he did not pretend to be hiding from dinosaurs, or flying an airplane. He didn't really pretend, at all. Obviously, it would seem that he was pretending when speaking of these boys that nobody else could see, but due to the other unexplainable events that occurred almost every day in that house, I was beginning to wonder. Especially when he told me this story:
He said that the 3 brothers were afraid of the "bad man", who was dressed in "policeman's clothes". He then told me that the "bad man" had tricked the boys into going "into the trees" with him, and that he had killed them. Now, put on the brakes for a second. Rest assured that my son was not allowed to watch anything on TV more violent than Toy Story, and we did not discuss things like death and murder in front of him. I didn't even know before that moment that he understood that people sometimes took the lives of other people. Okay, back to the story.
When my son said the boys had been murdered, I said, "They're dead?"
He very matter of factly, replied "Yeah. They're ghosts, Mommy".
Not wanting to make him feel self conscious, I responded with a simple, "Oh".
He went on to say that the parents of the boys were also in our house. He said "The Mommy and the Daddy don't have any faces, and they are afraid of you and Daddy". Naturally, I asked why.
"Because they think you and Daddy are ghosts".
Now, again, due to the strange events our family had encountered in this house since moving in, I had questions of my own. You see, my husband, my daughter who was now 11, and I, had all actually seen a little boy running through our house on many occassions. When we would see this little boy, it was always in the hallway right next to my son's bedroom. And yes, each time we were able to confirm that it had not been my son who we had seen. T-shirt colors would be entirely different (we might see the "boy" in a red shirt, when my son was wearing a blue shirt), my son might be fast asleep when the sighting took place, or even sometimes completely across the house from where the sighting occurred. It is likely difficult for some of you to believe this, but I promise you, it is entirely true.
"There are 3 boys?" I asked.
"Yes", said my son.
"Then, which one is the one that I see?" I asked. My son giggled a little, as though he thought I was very silly.
"You've seen all of them, Mommy".
I persisted, "The one I see always looks the same. I think I only see one of them". He smiled at me sweetly, almost as though he felt sorry for his Mommy who was clearly so confused.
"No, Mommy. You've seen all of them. And one of them tried to talk to Daddy, but Daddy didn't hear him".
At that moment, the memory of a story my husband had told me came flooding back. Just a few days earlier, my husband, crouched in the hallway next to my son's bedroom door, trying to find something in the linen closet, distinctly heard a child whisper in his ear, "Daddy!". My husband had whipped around, thinking that my son who was still supposed to be napping had woken up early. There was nobody there in the hall with him. When he stood up and opened my son's bedroom door, he was, in fact, still asleep. So you can imagine that I was quite floored when my son said this statement to me.
That's when I decided, imaginary friends or not, I didn't want these "boys" coming with us to our new house! In the days leading up to our move, I explained to my son that the "boys" (I called them by the names he used for them), could not come with us when we moved to our new house. He was very distraught, crying in a panicked tone, begging me to let them come. I was quite taken aback by his response, I hadn't expected anything quite so dramatic. But I stood my ground, and just incase these "boys" weren't just imaginary, I addressed them on the issue, as well! On a day when my husband had taken my son to the store with him, I found myself in a quiet and almost empty house. Our new baby girl was sleeping, and my older daughter was at school. I went into my son's bedroom, not sure exactly of what I was going to do. I'll admit, I felt tremendously silly, but went ahead and said what I needed to say. It went something like this:
"I know you really like my son, and he likes you, too. But he needs to stop talking about people that nobody else can see or people are going to start thinking some not-so-nice things about him. We are leaving this place, and I'm sorry, but you may not come with us. You need to stay here."
We moved from there about a week later, and our new house was totally "quiet". We never had any unexplained occurrences during the two years that we lived there. My son seemed to forgot about the 3 boys from the previous house before long. However, we have moved again since then, and my son, now 9, mentioned seeing a boy standing in the doorway of the master bathroom one day. He seemed embarrassed to tell me about it, as though he were afraid I would think something was wrong with him. Instead of telling him he must be mistaken, I asked him a few questions about what he thought he had seen. Immediately, I recognized the description as perfectly matching the description of my husband's cousin, who died in a housefire in 1972, at the age of 6. My son has never seen a picture of my husband's cousin, whose name was David.
So, imaginary friend, or ghost? Personally, I am still on the fence. However far-fetched it may seem that what my son saw were ghosts, it actually seems more far-fetched to think that he could have come up with all of those details on his own. So the next time your child begins telling you about an "imaginary" friend, pay close attention to the details...you may find that there's more to their friend than you could have ever imagined!
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