The children who really do see dead people

[Haldthin]

I have seen ghosts as a kid, in fact my whole family has, still do sometimes, and we've been haunted too. One time a ghost car crashed into are door and night and took it off of its hinges.

[pepijn]

I used to lay down on my bed and when facing my closet would see my shirts forming The likeness of a skull. Personally as a child I kept my closet open so I would see anything trying to hide in it. I would also continue hearing the voice of my grandma who died on my first birthday. (I assumed it was her because when I described it to my dad he said it sounded like her)

[Toadie]

I'm not sure what I believe in regards to ghost. Our brain is very powerful and can create something out of nothing

[coldethyl]

Oh good a necropost.

Your shirts forming into a skull was probably pareidolia. That's when the brain tries to make shapes we recognize out of nothing. It does it all the time and it usually wants to make faces.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pareidolia?s=t

[SimonOfGitta]

I think kids are more likely to see a ghost or spirit because they haven't been taught yet there are no such things as ghosts.

Ghosts either are or they aren't. What teaching kids to THINK does is allows them to investigate rational and reasonable explanations for all manner of things.

When I was a kid, I had some floral wallpaper. At night, some of the flowers looked like faces and it drove me to tears. I also was convinced that I could hear an army of witches' foot falls marching towards me whenever I closed my eyes. My mum, marvelous woman that she was, showed me a whole range of pareidolia. She also changed the wallpaper but, before she threw the old one away, she showed me how, at certain angles, some patterns looked like faces. As for the marching witches, after some investigation, mum realised that the sound only happened when I lay with my head on its side. It was my heart beat behind my ear. If she had simply said, "Yes dear, we can't be sure that there aren't ghosts and witches...'night 'night" well, it might meet with the approval of some worrying parents here, but it wouldn't have helped me sleep any better.

Oh, and by the way, if I were to guess where in a bedroom kids were likely to think a portal might be, I'd plump for the wardrobe, too.

[Brian Topp]

I used to lay down on my bed and when facing my closet would see my shirts forming The likeness of a skull. Personally as a child I kept my closet open so I would see anything trying to hide in it. I would also continue hearing the voice of my grandma who died on my first birthday. (I assumed it was her because when I described it to my dad he said it sounded like her)

Only thing here is necroposting.

I always notice people normally only read first page (or the first post) and then reply. Sometimes reading the entire thread does give more insight on what the Original Poster said.

As for open mind as a child.

My dad as perfect example of bad father use to tell me horrible things when i was 4 to 11 years old. Such wonderful things like the Monster Under my bed, A demon in the closet, if i make a noise when I meant to be in bed a creature named redcap would drag me to another world and slit my throat and drain my blood.

I believed him because he was my dad and I use to trust him but it doesn't mean he opened my mind to such gibberish and that I HAVE SAW IT. It just mean i had fears and nightmares and I learned how not to be a total jerk.

Edited May 11, 2012 by Brian Topp

[coldethyl]

Only thing here is necroposting.

I always notice people normally only read first page (or the first post) and then reply. Sometimes reading the entire thread does give more insight on what the Original Poster said.

As for open mind as a child.

My dad as perfect example of bad father use to tell me horrible things when i was 4 to 11 years old. Such wonderful things like the Monster Under my bed, A demon in the closet, if i make a noise when I meant to be in bed a creature named redcap would drag me to another world and slit my throat and drain my blood.

I believed him because he was my dad and I use to trust him but it doesn't mean he opened my mind to such gibberish and that I HAVE SAW IT. It just mean i had fears and nightmares and I learned how not to be a total jerk.

Your dad sounds fab. lol

[Brian Topp]

I can tell you stories about my dad that would beat any story told here.

Edited May 12, 2012 by Brian Topp

[airlybird]

Interesting thread.

Im not sure that I believe children have more of an ability to see ghosts as opposed to adults, but I do know that children are more open to the interpretation of what OTHERS believe to be true.

I have a story for this thread concerning this topic and I would be very interested in seeing what other people make of it, so here goes:

My oldest daughter is 20 years old now.

When she was 3 (it was a few months before she started nursery school) she began crying at bed time, saying she didn't want to go to bed because the little boy sitting on her bed crying upset her.

I saw this as one of two things, it was either a clever way to try to stay up later, or maybe that she might have had a bad dream which had upset her and therefore stayed with her, so I didn't relent and allow her to stay up later, I just simply assured her that it was "just a dream" and that it was bedtime and children need their sleep so she had to go to bed.

The reluctance to go to bed because of the little boy crying went on for about a week, maybe a few days more, and I was starting to question myself if I was handling the situation properly when the situation changed. She came down one morning and announced that the little boy was called "eye-rik" (that's how she pronounced the name) and that he was her friend.

She played with him every day and I'll admit right now I was completely unsure of how I was supposed to deal with this (didn't want to smother her imagination, but at the same time worried that my kid is seeing an invisible boy) so I talked it over with my mum and a few friends and came to the descison to just let her be and not make a thing out of it...The reasoning being that she would be starting nursery school soon and would have real children to play with, so she wouldn't need to invent a pretend friend, and this "eye-rik" character would simply go away in time, so I accepted her acceptance of him although I did tell her that I could not see him, and she in turn, accepted that.

I won't go into detail, I'll just say that she played with eye-rik every day, she was always chattering openly to him, but everytime she talked with me about him and I called him eye-rik, she would get exasperated and say "No mummy, he's called EYE-RIK" so I tried "Eric?", and she would say, NO, not ERIC, EYE-RIK". I had no idea what name she was trying to pronounce, so I just deffered to calling him the little boy.

And it also turned out that the little boy wouldn't cross roads, so...After a few tantrums at roads, we came up with the compromise that the little boy could come with us when we went out, but if we came to a road, Rachael (my daughter) would say goodbye to him and tell him that she would see him at home later.

Anyway, nothing remotely weird about this story yet, except a lonely kid with an imagination that created her an imaginary friend right?

Except that one day while I was mowing the grass, an old couple that lived a few doors down stopped to chat and commented how nice it was to see children in my house again (we'd only moved there in there about 6 months earlier).

This then led to a conversation about an old lady that had lived there previous to us, and the family that had lived there previous to her.

The family were a Jewish family with three children, their youngest son Issac had been run over by a car when they were on holiday down south, and shortly after this they had moved away from the area.

To this day, I can't be sure if Rachael over heard any of this conversation, but later on that evening I asked her to say Issac, and she beamed at me and said "YES mummy...Eye-rik".

And I have to say, that kinda DID freak me out...It just seemed too coincidental, but as I mentioned earlier, Rachael could have over heard the convo, and she could have merged the two things together in her "idea" of who eye-rik was...Well...this is how I explained it to myself, because I was trying not to feel freaked out.

After that there were some strange happenings, things would dissappear then reappear, there were strange noises (like a kid running around upstairs...And it wasn't my kid cause my kid was with me) and my dog would suddenly crouch, hackles raised and growl at thin air.

It's important for me to say at this point, that I'm open to the fact that the sounds and things going missing COULD have been due to me feeling scared and over reacting (because I was scared and jumpy) and my imagination running away with me...I also wonder if the dog acting weird was because it was on edge due to sensing that I was not feeling completely relaxed (because I know animals can and do pick up on these things).

Anyway...We're near the end now. Phew, this has been long winded, so thank you to anyone who has stuck with this lol...The crunch came when one night, I got up and went to put my son (who was a baby) into his cot (he'd woken.crying and I'd gotten into the habit that many an exhausted parent does of allowing him to fall asleep in my bed, then once asleep I would place him in his cot) I walked into my sons room and saw a little boy leaning over my younger brother (who was staying over and was sleeping in the bed in my sons room) looking right into his face, literally their noses were inches apart.

I don't know how long I was stood there staring and unable to move with shock, and I could hear this groaning noise as well (which I was shocked to discover was actually coming from me) but the boy didn't turn around and look at me (if he did I think I would have died on the spot with fear) he turned and walked right through the wall to my bedroom. I put my son in his cot and then stood in the hallway and "whisper shouted" (I know, it's an oxymoron, but you know what I mean) out side the bedroom door to my partner who was asleep in bed until he woke up (because I wasn't going in my room without someone else being awake).

I honestly don't know to this day if I dreamed it, I WAS half asleep and under the stress of a new baby plus a young child, I was also pretty freaked out by my daughter saying eye-rik meant Issac and everything fitting together with the child that had lived in my house, but had been killed in a road accident, and eye-rik/Issac not wanting to cross the road.

I'm naturally sceptical, and I think a lot of this can be logically explained away as coincidence and imagination, but there's always a tiny hint of doubt there too.

As an after note:

My youngest daughter who ten.

When she was about four years old, we were in Iceland (the frozen food store, not the country lol) and she piped up:

"When I get home, I'm going to play with the little boy who lives in our house!"

I froze and said "What's his name?"

She considered this for a few seconds (while perusing a freezer) and I'm thinking "If she says Issak or eye-rik, I'm gonna friggin die".

And she goes "Errrm...He's called sausage", she was looking in the freezer with frozen sausages in at the time, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Obviously she's heard the story, and she'd accepted it without question as fact that a little boy lived in our house.

I don't have a conclusion to this story, except to day that Rachael never saw the boy anymore a few months into starting nursery school, the weird things stopped happening, and I will never know if the whole thing was just me being a fraidy cat.

Edited May 12, 2012 by airlybird

[Zirna]

Children are more sinsative to the paranormal. As we grow older that sinsitivity tends to deminish more and more as we are taught not to believe in monsters or imaginary friends. As a child I had many paranormal experiences some of them occured while I was with my siblings or cousins and they all would experience the same thing. We would tell the adults and ask if it was a joke. No it turned out it hadn't been a joke and they would search the area where we had had the experience the location in question... my uncles basement. They would check the doors and windows, all had been locked. I hated that house, the basement always had a feeling of dread attached to it, when you had your back to the door you would get the feeling that someone was going to burst through at any moment. Even when there was noone down there. And at night when everyone was upstairs and in bed you could hear someone shuffeling around down there. It didn't help that the house had been the sight of satanic rituals, my mother didn't tell us this until we were older and my uncle had moved. Turns out he had called in a preacher to bless the home multiple times.

Some adults are sinsative to the paranormal as well. I've had my grandparents and aunts and uncles tell us about their experiences with the paranormal. And they were adults when the experiences took place. And for my uncle to go as far as having the house blessed, he must have had experiences in that house as well.

[airlybird]

Ooops, also meant to add this to my earlier post (but for some reason the edit button has gone away).

Your shirts forming into a skull was probably pareidolia.  That's when the brain tries to make shapes we recognize out of nothing.  It does it all the time and it usually wants to make faces.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pareidolia?s=t

When I was a kid, I had some floral wallpaper. At night, some of the flowers looked like faces and it drove me to tears.

pareidolia?

I've only been here a very short time and already I've learnt something thanks coldethyl

SimonOfGitta,, my sister and I used to do this all the time as children, we shared a room and we had these big floral curtains/drapes, we used to stare at them and we could see shapes start to manifest, but unlike it being scary, as it was for you with the skulls, we enjoyed the game because we saw fairies in the pattern, Then i also discovered that if I stayed awake until tiny little dots appeared before my eyes, I could even visualize the fairies moving from flower to flower.

Edited May 12, 2012 by airlybird

[coldethyl]

Ooops, also meant to add this to my earlier post (but for some reason the edit button has gone away).

pareidolia?

I've only been here a very short time and already I've learnt something thanks coldethyl

You're very welcome.

[Moon Gazer]

Airlybird, amazing story! Like you say, who knows if that little boy was a ghost, with all the going ons it could well have been but also like you say, could have imagined it with your mind in over drive over the other issues. Either way, it's an experience that will stay with you forever!

I did have an imaginary friend when I was a kid. I can clearly remember her, she always had a white nighty on and we played together behind the shed in our garden. Her name was Sarah and I can remember playing with her as much as any of my other friends.

According to my mum she ignored my playing with Sarah for a long time, however I started freaking my older sisters out a bit with it as they obviously couldn't see her and started getting upset if my mum wouldn't let me play out if the weather was bad.

Eventually after my mum telling me for weeks that I would be in trouble for keeping making things up and that I would have to go to the doctors I stopped seeing her (much to my devastation!).

Maybe she was totally made up and in my head. She certainly seemed real to me and I can remember her very clearly, I guess it's one of those things I will never know.

[coldethyl]

I had an imaginary friend but I don't remember a thing about her.

My mom remembers and told me about it.

I think it was just me being me tho.

[parentingstruggles]

Hi there- I am writing from a television production company and we are seeking parents whose children seem to possess a sixth sense for a documentary-style series. We are giving the families the opportunity to share their stories and those who participate with receive financial compensation. To learn more please email us at parentingstruggles@gmail.com

[Belle216]

My 14 year old daughter has been seeing dead people for 4 years now. She does not think of it as a gift and does not want it to happen anymore. About 6 months ago, she started hearing voices, first as whispers and now telling her do do things to herself and to others. She has resisted and not done anything they say but it is really freaking her out. She has told them to stop, to go away that she cannot help them. She has also asked them what they want but nothing helps. She sees some as transparent but others that look just like live people until she notices that they have to arm or are missing a leg or something. It really scares her and I want to help but I don't know how. I believe her and support her but since I can't see or hear them, how can I possibly help??????

[the_twilightzone]

^ Please don't take offense, but has she seen a doctor regarding the things she's seeing and hearing? Often, mental illness manifests during adoloscence, and visual and auditory hallucinations aren't uncommon.

I would rule out any and all health-related issues before turning to paranormal explanations, just to be safe.

[Welch]

When it comes to children seeing ghosts, my friend told me that her little goddaughter, who is less than 2 years old, smiles and acts as if she was playing with someone each time they visit the grave of the baby's great-grandmother, who died shortly before her birth. The other thing about her, is that each time she sees me she starts crying really badly and gets very scared. Now, I'm not saying that she has to see something around me or whatever, still it's rather weird because children usually like me...

[notforgotten]

I've seen, heard, communicated with and been touched by the dead. Unfortunately, quack doctors call it schizophrenia and say that it's all in your head. Psychiatry has a long history of lies and unethical practices. You can not always believe the doctors.

[SpiritWriter]

I would never call anyone here a liar but at the same time I think it's important that children who make such claims are examined by a doctor. IMO the odds are much greater for a child to have a psychological issue than a paranormal one.

Omg.... children need respect too and to be understood. These children are gifted, not crazy.. some parents put thier children through hell over this sh.. they learn quickly just to be quiet. Not having a loved one to talk to can be hard.. and im not talking about a psychologist that charges $ however many hundered dollars per hour either.. im talking about genuine love and understanding without the use of drugs.

Edited February 26, 2013 by SpiritWriter

[FLOMBIE]

How is having your children checked by a doctor disrespecting them?

[markprice]

Omg.... children need respect too and to be understood. These children are gifted, not crazy.. some parents put thier children through hell over this sh.. they learn quickly just to be quiet. Not having a loved one to talk to can be hard.. and im not talking about a psychologist that charges $ however many hundered dollars per hour either.. im talking about genuine love and understanding without the use of drugs.

This.

Better to trust the word of a child than a corrupted damaging drug industry.