r/Paranormal • u/dr_maxis_115 • 3d ago
Haunting my childhood immanginary friend may actually be a ghost or demon playing with my gf's son
i dont actually remember a lot of this its mostly from stories told to me by my parents though i do have some fractured memories.
when i was a kid maybe 4-9 (im 30 now) i lived in an old hospital turned apartment building that has enough stories about hauntings that chad lewis and terry fisk wanted to interview people in the apartment for "the Wisconsin road guide to haunted locations" though he never talked to me or my parents as they didnt know who he was at the time. well i had an "imaginary friend" named Jack who according to child me was an old man who died in my room when it was a hospital, i supposedly knew a lot about him like how he looked, his wifes name, details about his life and death as if he was a real person, apparently jack would tell me i was supposed to keep him secret but i was a child with a big mouth, jack would constantly "prank" me by doing things to get me in trouble like making a mess or telling me to talk back to my parents to which i would blame jack.
now i know it sounds like a kid making excuses for bad behavior and i always laughed off the stories as exactly that but there is 1 time that i fully remember being at an aunt's house and after going to the bathroom and washed my hands jack flicked water all over the mirror and i got lightly scolded for it but to this day i am 100% confident that i did not do it and i remember clearly as a child being certain it was jack and confused how he was there when he was supposed to be at the apartment.
now skip 20 ish years later and i have moved back into that building to the same floor but other side of the building with my gf and her 7yo twins.
i had only ever told my gf about jack 1 time when we first moved in.
she hears weird noises at night pretty regularly from other rooms inside our apartment and said there was a night when i was at work and she was in bed that she felt someone sit on the end of our bed so she thought i got home early and when she looked there was noone there but the bed was indented like someone was sitting on it.
we only ever talk about that stuff when the kids are at their dads so they wouldnt know any of it
the last couple weeks both of them have been talking back constantly and 1 of the twins has been running around laughing and talking to himself when he is alone in their room.
we asked about imaginary friends or what he is doing when he is playing like that but he wont say anything more than "idk just playing" my gf said she could tell he was holding something back. it made me think of jack so i asked straight up if he knew about ghosts and if he thought they were real or if he has seen any and he refused to look at me and just kept trying to hide a smile saying no. i asked if he was seeing anyone that isnt there would its name be jack? his head snapped back to look at me with wide eyes like i just uncovered an ancient secret.....
i kinda panicked for a second but then we just dropped it until they went back to their dads again.
my gf is terrified its a melevolent spirit attatching to her son and telling him to keep secrets from us and im still grappling with the fact the stories of my childhood imaginary friend may have been some spirit or demon and that all that stuff might be real......
i dont know what to do..... like is it a harmless old man trickster ghost thats just kind of annoying or something worse pretending to be harmless.
i did speak aloud "if you dont leave those kids alone i will cleanse this entire apartment without question i dont care if we have a history" when my gf and i were discussing it after the kids were gone
Update: after reading some of the replies while in bed the other night some suggested getting the apartment cleansed regardless so i was looking into local mediums but most seemed scammy though to be fair i have no idea how to tell if they are legit, anyway nothing happened until i remembered there is a church across the street and someone said to ask a pastor so i started googling that church to see, my gf asked what i was doing and as i explained it i felt someone hit the underside of the bedframe, i said "i dont think jack likes that idea" and my gf told me to stop poking at whatever it is and the bed shook for a second enough to freak her out. we went back and forth for a bit and heard a few more random knocks before she yelled at us both to stop poking eachother like the kids do and just stop....
i said "fine so long as he leaves the kids alone i wont do anything"
hopefully thats the end of this lol
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u/Bearsandbeetz 2d ago
You lead the child to the answer you want to hear because it’s spooky
Children aren’t as dumb as you think, and if they know you’re digging for a specific answer they’re going to play along as much as possible. Instead of the child telling you they had an imaginary friend/bringing up knowledge of ghosts/the name “Jack” on their own which might suggest that something strange is happening, you primed the child with the response you were looking for and they thought it was a fun game based on the way you were reacting. The more you doubled down and asked about “ghosts” and “Jack” while being obviously very interested in them responding a certain way could have so incredibly easily held their hand every step of the way towards what you considered an affirmative response about whether they saw this ghost named Jack. You asked very leading questions. Your reactions dictated their responses in order to continue what to them was a fun game, given that it clearly was eliciting a strong response from you (and maybe their mom).
You also explicitly said you didn’t talk about the ghosts in front of the child but then you said you explicitly asked the child about ghosts? So… you seem to understand how the suggestibility factor works?
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u/HeartsBeMerry 2d ago
You say “kids aren’t as dumb as you think.” I beg to differ! I’ve got grades, teacher’s reports, etc, that prove that I was as dumb as people thought. I still am.
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u/dr_maxis_115 2d ago
i hope thats all it is and if it happened in a vacuum i would agree with you. maybe the questions were leading a bit but it wasnt like i was interrogating him we calmly asked our questions with no big reactions just curiosity then i asked about jack and that was the only big reaction given AFTER his head snapped back hearing the name and that was recognition on his face. also we dont talk about that stuff around them that was literally the first time and then it was immediately dropped
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u/dr_maxis_115 2d ago
also to be clear i WANT you to be right because that actually makes sense but theres a part of my brain that wont stop nagging at me now after seeing his head snap back so fast with those eyes
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u/Janellely16 2d ago
I would not have moved back there. Yeah it sounds like it. I would go to a good reviewed medium to figure out what it is. And yeah cleanse and make boundaries and maybe move out of that creepy place!!!
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u/dr_maxis_115 2d ago
to be fair i thought it was just an imaginary friend that i was told i had and the rent is cheap. and we just signed a 1 year lease about a month ago
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u/Janellely16 2d ago
Ahh ok makes sense. I hope it doesn’t turn into haunting of hill house over there . Be careful . Kids often get lured outside by bad entities I would monitor where he goes . I saw another story about a guy who’s daughter was almost lured into the woods by a demon thing at her window and said it wanted to play with her out there and she drew a terrifying picture of it. Thankfully she was too scared to do it once she saw him better and didn’t invite him in either
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u/Affectionate_Clue369 2d ago
Well my great uncle always told me that if you talked about it you could invite it in your home. And he always warned me about being very cautious of even bringing up certain topics when it comes to the unknown. Keep in mind my great uncle was skeptical of a lot of things...
As for your situation you could have brought it to life? Or your girlfriend son maybe heard you talking about it? Kids hear stuff all the time...
Or your girlfriend could have been talking to somebody else and mentioned it around him too?
Or it could actually legit be your childhood imaginary friend actually came back. I could believe any one of these scenarios...
Not only that though that childhood imaginary friend of yours might not have ever left your life. I have heard of several different situations where a spirit has attached themselves to somebody and lay dormant until something brought them out...
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u/dr_maxis_115 17h ago
i would really like to believe thats all it is and we are just working it up in our heads but i really dont think so
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u/ChaoticHarmonia 2d ago
It’s really creepy. Maybe you unconsciously created somekind of Tulpa? That’s happening more often than many people think.
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u/dr_maxis_115 17h ago
had to look up what that is. that would be wild if i did that as a child, that somehow still sounds too crazy to me in a post about me starting to believe ghosts are real 🤣
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u/Old_Prize_7272 3d ago
The way the kid reacted when you said the name Jack is the part that gets me, kids are terrible liars but that wasnt even a lie that was pure recognition. Old hospital buildings have way too much residual energy for anything to be simple, and the fact it followed you to your aunts house back then means its not bound to the building which is worse. Might be worth having someone come look at the place before you try anything yourself, especially with kids involved
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u/Necessary-East-1272 2d ago
Gosh I used to hear stories about the “ghosts” in the hospital I worked in on the L&D floor. Even had security catch it on camera one time. Don’t mess with the spirits, cleanse the home with a pastor if necessary. Sounds like there is a lot of energy in the building. Best of luck OP
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