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Why do so many kids ‘see ghosts’? We asked some psychologists.
Washington Post ^ | 10/28/19 | by Rosemary Counter

Posted on 10/26/2022 6:11:20 PM PDT by NeverCheney

In the spirit of Halloween, prepare yourself for my spookiest story: When I was about 3, my mother took me to her friend Donna’s farmhouse. As the grown-ups sipped tea in the kitchen, I played freely throughout the house — this was the ’80s — until reporting back with some alarming news: A little girl was crying at the top of the stairs. Mom dismissed it as just my imagination while Donna’s face turned white. She just remembered what her daughter, long grown up and moved out, used to see and say as a child: a little girl crying at the top of the stairs.

I don’t remember any of this, of course. Three decades later, this un-fact-checkable story has gone the way of many campfire tales. It’s mostly fun and only partly scary, though firm proof for this undeniable truth: Children are spooky little creeps who see ghosts, report past lives and chat at night with dead relatives.

If you don’t feel like sleeping tonight, I suggest heading over to Reddit and falling down a terrifying rabbit hole. Jezebel collects and publishes an annual list for Halloween that will haunt you for the rest of the year. Turns out kids see ghosts all the time.

When I fished for stories in my local moms’ group, dozens of moms delivered in spades: a little boy who saw “zillions of people” walking slowly through an empty cemetery; a 2-year-old who reported “Grandma’s in the sky with Pappy!” minutes after her grandmother’s death; and a child’s especially disturbing imaginary friend named Suzy — her father’s late first wife.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


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To: packagingguy

“saw a tranny when my friend and I were eating out in sixth grade. Does that count?”

When I was in 6th grade I saw my cousin rebuild a tranny right there in his backyard. I think they bolted it up to a Hemi but I’m not sure.


41 posted on 10/26/2022 9:30:04 PM PDT by Clutch Martin ("The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right." )
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To: fella

“What about ghost pets.”

I’ve seen two of our cats after they died. Each time it was within a week after she passed. (I’m sure it was a dream, or wishful thinking, but seemed very real when it happened.)


42 posted on 10/27/2022 7:06:09 AM PDT by MayflowerMadam (When government fears the people, there is liberty.)
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To: Bullish

“They see dead people?”

Yes...


43 posted on 10/27/2022 7:16:35 AM PDT by Openurmind (The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world it leaves to its children. ~ D. Bonhoeffer)
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To: R_Kangel

“Believe me .... they really were there.”

Absolutely do. Been there.


44 posted on 10/27/2022 7:22:09 AM PDT by Openurmind (The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world it leaves to its children. ~ D. Bonhoeffer)
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To: VRWCer

“Reading regular people’s stories was a fascinating rabbit hole to go down!”

They go well beyond just “active imaginations” don’t they?


45 posted on 10/27/2022 7:26:44 AM PDT by Openurmind (The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world it leaves to its children. ~ D. Bonhoeffer)
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To: I want the USA back

“Kids have great imaginations and are good at manipulating parents, teachers and “psychologists”.”

Most of these sightings are when children are only two and a half-three years old. Well before they have the mental capacity or imagination to manipulate anyone.


46 posted on 10/27/2022 7:38:44 AM PDT by Openurmind (The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world it leaves to its children. ~ D. Bonhoeffer)
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To: R_Kangel

About 15 years ago my mom died. I was at my daughters house watching the kids while they went to Vegas. Went to bed in the downstairs bedroom and was still awake when I felt a presence beside the bed……then I smelled the perfume she always wore….then poof it was all gone. Told my daughter when she got back and she said….yeah, I’ve ‘felt’ her before. This was after in my own house I heard her say my name. Nothing since.


47 posted on 10/27/2022 8:03:58 AM PDT by sheana
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To: NeverCheney
People who are nearing the end see ghosts because they are so close to the threshold, the passage between life and death.


48 posted on 10/27/2022 8:38:27 AM PDT by x
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To: dforest

I have never laid eyes on a “ghost”. That being said I did live in a haunted house where lots of weird crap happened and still happens. Multiple witnesses from family, friends and neighbors and it’s went on since the house was built in 1982.

Doors opening and closing by themselves, crashing sounds in the middle of the night like the fridge falling over, you go check and nothing is out of place. Items disappearing and reappearing months or even years later in obscure places in the house. You drop something in the floor and bend over to pick it up and can’t find it and start looking and you find the object you dropped in the next room in the middle of a table where you had to travel 15 feet, make a 90 degree turn and then travel another 20 feet and then up another 4-5 feet to the middle of said table.

The back door opening and closing at 4:00am waking both parents and their dog who goes crazy barking. Dad gets his 1911 and waits at the bedroom door and hears the person walk through the kitchen and down the hallway to their door and stop. Dad finally opens the door ready to engage the goblin and finds nothing. Searches the house one end to the other and finds the back door closed and locked. These are just a few of the weird things in that house.


49 posted on 10/27/2022 9:34:10 AM PDT by sarge83
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To: sarge83

I would definitely have moved.

My in-laws house was haunted, or something. My husband and sister-in-law saw stuff often. I only saw a thing once. Father in law said: the only ghost in this house is the Holy Ghost.

He just never heard one call his name...


50 posted on 10/27/2022 10:12:04 AM PDT by madison10 (There is no King, but Jesus.)
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To: madison10

My Dad is a southern Baptist deacon and its his house and he has witnessed lots of strange things, but never seen anything. One Christmas the family was in for Christmas and siblings were telling stories about the house they had had happen to them or with other family or friends to their kids. After several stories my Dad piped up and said there is nothing here in this house, I haven’t seen it yet!

Mom had decorated the house for Christmas and there was an ornament with a bell on it that she laid over the front door handle. We almost never use the front door for anything and it stays locked and deadbolted. When Dad made his not seen it statement, the deadbolted locked front door’s door handle ornament started to shake and the bell ringing while it shook and then it shot off the door through the foyer and landed about 12 feet away in the den entrance. Something didn’t like Dad’s statement. Needless to say the grandkids were bug eyed, with jaws dropped open!


51 posted on 10/27/2022 10:48:43 AM PDT by sarge83
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To: sarge83

Well THAT story gave me goosebumps!


52 posted on 10/27/2022 11:06:52 AM PDT by madison10 (There is no King, but Jesus.)
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To: sarge83

There are several of us that experienced “things” at our church. A few of us women would NOT go into the sanctuary alone at night.


53 posted on 10/27/2022 11:09:18 AM PDT by madison10 (There is no King, but Jesus.)
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To: madison10

99% of the events are like that but on three occasions my brother and two nephews experienced the old hag, sleep paralysis or something effect. All happened in different bedrooms, all were in the late teens and it happened at different times. They each reported hearing a noise in the room while sleeping that woke them up and they turned over from their sides to their backs to see what the noise was and something pounced on top of their chests. They were paralyzed and couldn’t’ move and in each case they finally uttered Jesus and instantly it all stopped, said it felt evil.

My sister and I each had this happen when we lived there. We would turn the nightstand lamp off and lay down and as soon as we settled into the bed something would slap the pillow by one of your ears and you could feel the wind from whatever it was as it went by your head, talk about brining you up out of the bed!


54 posted on 10/27/2022 11:14:57 AM PDT by sarge83
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To: madison10

Our church is fairly quite but it is 30 years old. We have security cameras and they have picked up one weird thing in the education/gym building. One night around 2:00am a form the size of a child appeared in the gym floor like they were walking across. You could make out a torso and legs but no feet or head.


55 posted on 10/27/2022 11:16:44 AM PDT by sarge83
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To: sarge83

So, maybe I missed it, was this a house that had been in the family through several generations?

It needed a home blessing or some such regardless.


56 posted on 10/27/2022 11:44:14 AM PDT by madison10 (There is no King, but Jesus.)
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To: madison10

Brand new house built in 1982, was blessed when we moved in. I was a senior in high school and my family had never given a thought to ghosts or haunted houses until a few months after we moved in.


57 posted on 10/27/2022 12:01:06 PM PDT by sarge83
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To: sarge83

“Too bad we can’t stay, baby!”

Language
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IH6IeiLtts


58 posted on 10/27/2022 12:03:30 PM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: sarge83

Maybe built on top of something like a grave yard.

My husband just elaborated on the thing at church: Two youth pastors and my husband, who was the custodian, saw it, dark and hooded. Not at the same time. My husband was leery of going into the sanctuary in the dark, too.

The last custodian turned ALL the lights on when she was there alone.

I think a church is a strange place for such happenings.


59 posted on 10/27/2022 12:13:05 PM PDT by madison10 (There is no King, but Jesus.)
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To: madison10

It was built on an old farm. There were no structures where the house sits when the foundation was laid. However, about 20 yards out in the front yard they came across burnt embers where something had once stood.

Churches can be creepy with the lights out. We have a local church with stain glass windows from circa 1895 and with a full moon in the right position you can see what appears to be demons in the glass, very disturbing.


60 posted on 10/27/2022 1:07:38 PM PDT by sarge83
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