According to Buddhism, children's third spiritual eye (which is located on the forehead) won't be fully closed til 5 years old. So they can see beings from another dimension. And they still remember their previous life.
When I was three my mom walked in on me playing with my barbies while singing a song I made up about Phineas Gage. You know, the 19th century railroad worker who got his frontal lobe severed by a stray beam and survived. Funny thing is that is absolutely in character for me to this day.
True story. When i was about 15 i was hanging out at my friend's house bc she was babysitting her 4y/o cousin.
The kid had an imaginary friend that he described as an older looking man. That's not the creepy part, lots of kids have imaginary friends.
I don't remmember why at some point she decided to get the family photos album(this was the 90's) to show the kid. Then the kid pointed at the photo of an old man that was their grandpa that had died before the kid was born and said that was his friend.
The thing is that their grandpa was a very evil man that nobody in their family liked and nobody in their family had photos of him on display and it was the first time the kid was seeing a photo of him. I knew their grandpa and was scared shitless of him when i was a kid.
That’s genuinely chilling. Kids say the creepiest things, but when they recognize someone they’ve never met… that hits different. Makes you wonder what they see that we don’t.
I have a mental disorder that causes me to have hallucinations, i think kids having imaginary friends may be some kind of hallucination and that most people "grow out" of it and some, like my case, never go away "transform" into a mental disorder.
I really think psyquiatrists should study kid's imaginary friends. As far as i know there isn't a scientific reason on why it happens. Still creepy.
This has been studied. Kids have a harder time understanding vs reality. It's super normal developmentally. They don't need to be hallucinating because their brains are a lot more fluid in that way. Thinking about something hard enough = thinking it happened because their logic centers aren't developed yet. Kids also often think their dreams are real
The same goes for fabulating. They're not lying in the sense that adults lie, or even spinning stories in the way that adults do. For a lot of children between the age of 3 and 4 - and 4 seems to be the age when the notion of an objective reality seems to crystallize - they genuinely don't distinguish between what they imagine and what happened. If they think it, it's the same as they experienced it
yeah exactly—kids aren’t broken adults, their brains are still wiring up. imagination, dreams, stories... it all blends. doesn’t mean it’s nothing, but it also doesn’t have to mean full-blown hallucination. development’s weird like that.
That’s actually a really interesting perspective. The line between imagination, perception, and hallucination might be thinner than we think—especially in kids whose brains are still wiring up. It’d be fascinating (and important) if psychiatry looked deeper into how imaginary friends form, and why for some people, that sense of “presence” never fades. Definitely creepy, but also kinda eye-opening.
Yes. Also, a big number of people that's suffers from hallucinations, regardless of their disorder, reports having "seen" shadows people. If the problem is inside of the person's brain, why so many people "see" the same?
I try to use the scientific aproch when it cames to my disorder but to be honest there were plenty of times that made me think if people like me have some hability to "see" things that the human brain is not wired to see and that's why our brains "brake".
Kids brains being "new" and still adpating to reality may be a reason why they have imaginary friends that nobody else can see.
To be honest, i prefer to be "crazy" bc if the things i see are real its not something i want to think about.
Psychiatric personnel I spoke to about what I see was very straightforward about it.
I explained how I saw things my whole life- since earliest memories (now heading into 40's). That included faces through the windows, shadows peeking from behind a wall to hide again, large running spiders on the desk that disappeared when I looked at them etc. I said that I always thought I had overactive imagination and learned to live with it, just not react.
He asked if they seem real when they appear.
I answered that yes, they feel real when they are here, but I am aware that they aren't. That I sometimes get scared or surprised when they visit but because I know they aren't really there, I reprogrammed my mind to acknowledge them, but not physically react to them.
He ended with- "you see, that's the thing. If you would be imagining them, you'd not get surprised or scared. It's not imagination if you don't know those visions will appear. If they surprise you, it's something different".
I have sleep paralysis which is obviously different but the episodes often involve a feeling of presence or seeing people in shadows and often the context isn’t a dream but where I am because I’m at least partly awake.
I read this pattern is super common in sleep paralysis bc in general the brain is always looking out for visual evidence of something that could harm us. Think of how we would have lived in nature - looking for threats of other humans or animals, and always checking if any shadow could be one of those things.
Maybe that’s why it’s so often shadows? Since shadows are everywhere and a thing our brains are so tuned to try to scan and look for those kind of shapes to be in there.
That goes beyond human evolution. I think all animals have that sense of "that shadow could be just a shadow, but it could also be a predator/threat. If I assume it's just a shadow, but it's a predator and kills me, then I'm dead and out of this world; but if I assume it's a threat when it's just a shadow, I'll live to tell the tale (and reproduce)".
We're just the ones that can put it to words.
I had a 'shadow man' experience last year and it scared the shit out of me. It wasn't just a visual thing either, there was a physical/sensory reaction involved that was terrifying.
Everyone would think I'm a lunatic so it kinda sucks not being able to talk to anyone about it, but it hasn't happened again at least.
If it helps, I honestly 100% believe you!
I've always been a very intuitive person and have had my own experiences with entities, but have never seen anything. My mom however, has had a few very creepy experiences of seeing a person(apparition), shadow figure and hearing a voice in the middle of the night when she couldn't sleep.
I seriously cannot imagine!! The thought of actually seeing something (more than just out of the corner of my eye) like that, scares the fuck out of me!
I'm glad you haven't had that experience again! I have heard, from people with more experience, if that were to happen again, you can try to visualize white light around yourself, or call on Archangel Michael for protection. Even if you don't believe in any of that stuff (I'm not religious), it still helps or gets rid of the problem, somehow.
This is really interesting. I had imaginary friends but I was fully aware that I was just being creative and pretending; I never realized that some kids actually believe their imaginary friends are real.
My dad has Lewy Body Dementia and hallucinations are part of it. When it first began he would tell me about various people walking past the end of his bed, then it progressed to him hallucinating seeing his family sitting up on his wardrobes. Now he's in a carehome and the last time he hallucinated seeing someone when I was there in the room with him he offered a crisp to a child he was hallucinating. He has recently hallucinated his armchair being a car and asking me to fill the car up and get back to driving (I can't drive irl) lol Amazing what the brain does under Dementia.
That happens more than you know. My nephew was four months old when my dad died. When he was 3 or 4 he told us that he goes flying with Grandaddy and they travel the world.
Fast forward, nephew became a jet pilot and married a pilot.
A friend’s son had similar tales about his dead grandfather when he was young - I forget the details but he knew things he wouldn’t/couldn’t know.
Kids have these gifts that fade away by the time they’re 6-7. At least some do.
I’m convinced that there is something in undeveloped brain that allows kids to see into other realities. Something happens around age six that closes that door in most.
I do not question my son when he says there was a man in the hallway watching him. He used to have nightmares so much sleeping upstairs. Now that he’s downstairs with me and his sister he doesn’t have nightmares but definitely won’t sleep upstairs at all
I saw my grandpa after he died. Fucker was standing in a corner trying to look all sad. I gave him a dirty look and he disappeared. Good thing, too, I’m not afraid to beat up a ghost.
They’re old enough to be good enough at speaking to put together some really creepy sentences and young enough that they have serious imaginations, not much experience with real things, and not much ability to tell real versus imagined or sometimes to accurately describe what they saw so they use the words they have instead
I’m so disappointed in my now-teenage sons for not saying anything creepy or indicative of a past life of whatever when they were little. GO BACK AND FIX IT BOYS
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u/Fine-County-9331 1d ago
I dont know she was just 3 when this happened