If there's one thing we can all agree on about scary stories and creepy movies, it's that the child characters always have a way of amping up the chill factor.
But when a child says something super creepy in real life? They might has well have just announced a zombie apocalypse.
" Parents of Reddit, what is the scariest thing your child ever said to you or to someone else?"
(Cue Music) We Don't Talk About the Attic Man...
"She asked, 'Will the man in the attic come with us when we move?'"
- Similar-Dream.9731
"My Aunt-in-law grew up in a three-flat in the 50s. Her family owned the entire building and the apartments were connected by a stairway in the back. They never locked their back doors and the top apartment (the attic) at the time was empty."
"She told us that when she was little, a man from the attic would sometimes come down to her room, which she shared with her sister, and talk with them. He also sometimes read them stories."
"She told her parents but they never believed her, thinking she was young and making it up. Months later, they went up to the attic apartment and there was evidence that someone had been living there."
"She said he was a very nice man and would often sit in their room and talk with them at night."
- straighouttacraggin
Don't Let Them In
"'Mummy, the invisible man wants to come into your bedroom.'"
"ABSOLUTELY NOT."
- Murdercorn24
Little Kid Visions Are the Worst
"I'm not a parent. But I was putting my two-year-old niece to bed while babysitting one night, and she looked over my shoulder and said, 'Who's that?'"
"I looked behind me and asked, 'Who?'"
"She said, 'The man behind you. He was with you in the kitchen too.'"
"We were the only ones in the house. I spent the rest of the evening in the living room, on the one chair with its back to the wall, glancing around nervously."
- bittyberry
Not Quite How That Works, Kiddo
"Not my child, but my nephew (from a very Christian family) one day said, 'If we all go to heaven when we die, why don’t I kill everyone, and then we can all be in Heaven?'"
"He was five and meant it in the most positive way. He just wants to get everyone into heaven faster."
- goodeggbadegg
Reincarnation, Much?
"I was driving my son to daycare. It was just the two of us as I already dropped my other son off at school. My then three-year-old said to me, 'Mommy, I love you more than my first mommy.'"
"I said, 'Your first mommy?'"
"He said, 'Yes, my first mommy in California' (we live in the US but about as far from California as you can get)."
"I said, 'You lived in California?'"
"He said, 'Yes, up until Jason stabbed me, and then I came to you!'"
" I said, 'Who is Jason?' and then he just started talking about something else. I tried to get more info from him on it, but he never talked about it again."
"So weird and I can't imagine where he would have gotten the fodder for it to make it up in his imagination. The only Jason we knew was someone he saw only occasionally and my son liked him. There was no fear or bad feelings associated with him. The only media he saw at that point was various kids' TV."
"Still kind of freaks me out almost 10 years later!"
- Aurelie1973
Lock That Hatch Down
"My two-year-old never stops talking and has said some really weird and freaky things lately. The creepiest one was when we were putting her to bed and she said goodnight to the 'closet man.'"
"When we asked her who she meant, she told us it was the little man that lived in the small access hatch she has in the back of her closet."
"The scary thing is she has never seen that hatch open and I'm pretty sure she has never seen it before because there has been a big storage tote in front of it since before she was born!"
"You bet I checked the hatch the next morning when she was downstairs and found nothing but dust and spiderwebs in there so that made me a bit happier!"
- itsfish20
Family Visiting Hours
"A few months after my mom passed, my daughter was sitting in the tv room. She looked down the hall and I could tell something caught her eye."
"She got up and said, 'Yaya is in her room,' and proceeded to go in my mom's room and shut the door."
"I could hear my daughter talking and laughing through the door. I was equal parts scared of and hoping to hear my mom too, but I didn't."
- ScarySuzy
Protective Older Brother
"My oldest son kept saying he had a baby sister in my belly. I found out two weeks later I was pregnant."
"I ended up miscarrying while at work about a month later. He was already sleeping and I hadn’t told my boyfriend at the time until I got home (and we were outside smoking so my oldest couldn’t have overheard)."
"I woke up the next morning and he was in bed with me and said, 'I’m sorry she had to leave you,' and gave me a big hug. I was SHOOK."
- youwouldtalkhuh
The Doll Whisperer
"I was at a silent auction and there was a really creepy 100-year-old doll that I bid on as a joke. It turns out nobody else wanted it, so I won. My wife and I were talking the whole time about how creepy this doll was."
"As I stood in line to pay for it, my daughter asked to hold the doll, so I gave it to her. A few older ladies starting coming up to her and saying things like, 'That doll is older than I am' and 'You’re so lucky to have such a pretty doll.'"
" I guess because my daughter had been listening to us talking, she would respond with things like, 'Did you hear that? She’s laughing at you.'"
" I tried so hard not to laugh at the look on their faces, but the last one got me. My daughter put her ear down to the doll's face and with a very serious look said to a lady, 'I think the doll just said the ‘F-word.'"
- blackwidowink
Unexplainable Memories
"Not my kid, but my friend's. They were across the country visiting family and out for a drive. Her four-year-old points down an old overgrown road (more of a dirt track) and said, 'That was where I used to go to school.'"
"She told him he didn't even go to school yet. She mentioned it to her brother when they drove by another day, and he told her that well down that track used to be a schoolhouse in the 1800s."
"The same kid was on a walk with Mom in our town around a fairly wooded pond. He asked his Mom if they could go another way. She said there was only one path and asked why."
"He responded, 'I don't like that man hanging from the tree.' Needless to say, they moved away from that area very quickly!"
- Beyarboo
Unnerving, To Say the Least
"I took my three-year-old on a flight this last summer. He’s been on an airplane several times in his short life so it’s not like it was something new to him. But as we took off he was explaining the process to me."
"'Mama we go fast and then up and up and then…' he stared straight ahead and put his hand on his chest and continued with, 'we fall dooooooooooown and (explosion noises) and there’s fire all over.'"
"And he sat for a solid beat just staring straight ahead with that little hand over his heart and his eyes far away before becoming his normal toddler self again. He hasn’t mentioned anything like it since."
- Nikiboomboom23
Not the Nighttime Routine We Were Expecting
"My daughter is three and is working on performing her own nighttime routines. We asked her how she gets ready for bathtime and gave her her stuffed bunny to demonstrate with. She takes the bunny and begins explaining the steps of her routine, mimicking the actions on the doll."
"'First you take off your pants...' She wiggles Rabbit’s legs."
"'Then you take off your shirt...' She wiggles Rabbit’s arms."
"'Then you take off your underwear...' She wiggles the legs again."
"'Then you take off your hands....' She pulls on Rabbit’s arm in a plucking motion."
"'Then you take off your arms...' Rabbit’s arms are wrenched immediately."
"'Then you take off your legs, your hair, your tummy, your face!' She gleefully laughs as she mimes ripping each part off of Rabbit."
"'All done!' She looks up at us with a smile. We are aghast."
- Dyshin
What in the 'Paranormal Activity'...
"When my boys were smaller, they had an imaginary friend called TrickerTrick (Trick or Trick maybe, never was clear), but my son was telling me about him shortly after we had moved from the old house (stuff happened there, noises and s**t like that)."
"So he was telling me that TrickerTrick was really tall and that he came from the old house. Sometimes, he took things that don't belong to him."
"I asked H (my younger son) if there was anything else, and he said, 'He doesn't like you at all, Daddy.'"
"I asked him why and H started looking nervous."
" J (older son, about six at the time) left the room. H just stood there and didn't say anything."
"I asked him if TrickerTrick was there then. H looked a bit to his left, then directly into my eyes and said, 'He said to say no.'"
- timechuck
...Oh
"Driving by a cemetery when my kid was about three years old, they asked, 'Who are all those people standing around there?'"
"There was no one standing anywhere in the cemetery."
- SippinPop
What a Relief!
"I nannied my niece when she was about one and a half years old. For like a few days in a row, I’d go to put her down for a midday nap, she’d start waving to the corner of the room behind the door and saying, 'Man, man.'"
" I could hear her on the monitor saying it when I’d closed the door too. She couldn’t speak well enough to explain further so I tried to figure out what she was seeing. I checked the door, made sure the monitor wasn’t doing some funny, etc."
"It was creeping me out and she seemed so distracted by it so finally on the third day I decided to close the door and sit in there with her to see what was going on."
"Turns out at that time of day, the sun was in a position to shine through a crack of the curtains and a hanging mobile in just the right way to create what looked like a hand shape on the wall. She was trying to say 'hand,' not man. Boy was I relieved. I adjusted the curtains and all was well, lol (laughing out loud)."
. what_the_a
Some of these accounts are truly chilling. There are stories here that are probably coincidences that could be explained away easily enough, but others could easily be cut straight into a horror movie!
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Parents Break Down The Scariest Thing Their Kid Has Ever Said
Content Warning: Grief, Child Loss, Creepy Stories
If there's one thing we can all agree on about scary stories and creepy movies, it's that the child characters always have a way of amping up the chill factor.
But when a child says something super creepy in real life? They might has well have just announced a zombie apocalypse.
Redditor JrlTan asked:
(Cue Music) We Don't Talk About the Attic Man...
"She asked, 'Will the man in the attic come with us when we move?'"
- Similar-Dream.9731
"My Aunt-in-law grew up in a three-flat in the 50s. Her family owned the entire building and the apartments were connected by a stairway in the back. They never locked their back doors and the top apartment (the attic) at the time was empty."
"She told us that when she was little, a man from the attic would sometimes come down to her room, which she shared with her sister, and talk with them. He also sometimes read them stories."
"She told her parents but they never believed her, thinking she was young and making it up. Months later, they went up to the attic apartment and there was evidence that someone had been living there."
"She said he was a very nice man and would often sit in their room and talk with them at night."
- straighouttacraggin
Don't Let Them In
"'Mummy, the invisible man wants to come into your bedroom.'"
"ABSOLUTELY NOT."
- Murdercorn24
Little Kid Visions Are the Worst
"I'm not a parent. But I was putting my two-year-old niece to bed while babysitting one night, and she looked over my shoulder and said, 'Who's that?'"
"I looked behind me and asked, 'Who?'"
"She said, 'The man behind you. He was with you in the kitchen too.'"
"We were the only ones in the house. I spent the rest of the evening in the living room, on the one chair with its back to the wall, glancing around nervously."
- bittyberry
Not Quite How That Works, Kiddo
"Not my child, but my nephew (from a very Christian family) one day said, 'If we all go to heaven when we die, why don’t I kill everyone, and then we can all be in Heaven?'"
"He was five and meant it in the most positive way. He just wants to get everyone into heaven faster."
- goodeggbadegg
Reincarnation, Much?
"I was driving my son to daycare. It was just the two of us as I already dropped my other son off at school. My then three-year-old said to me, 'Mommy, I love you more than my first mommy.'"
"I said, 'Your first mommy?'"
"He said, 'Yes, my first mommy in California' (we live in the US but about as far from California as you can get)."
"I said, 'You lived in California?'"
"He said, 'Yes, up until Jason stabbed me, and then I came to you!'"
" I said, 'Who is Jason?' and then he just started talking about something else. I tried to get more info from him on it, but he never talked about it again."
"So weird and I can't imagine where he would have gotten the fodder for it to make it up in his imagination. The only Jason we knew was someone he saw only occasionally and my son liked him. There was no fear or bad feelings associated with him. The only media he saw at that point was various kids' TV."
"Still kind of freaks me out almost 10 years later!"
- Aurelie1973
Lock That Hatch Down
"My two-year-old never stops talking and has said some really weird and freaky things lately. The creepiest one was when we were putting her to bed and she said goodnight to the 'closet man.'"
"When we asked her who she meant, she told us it was the little man that lived in the small access hatch she has in the back of her closet."
"The scary thing is she has never seen that hatch open and I'm pretty sure she has never seen it before because there has been a big storage tote in front of it since before she was born!"
"You bet I checked the hatch the next morning when she was downstairs and found nothing but dust and spiderwebs in there so that made me a bit happier!"
- itsfish20
Family Visiting Hours
"A few months after my mom passed, my daughter was sitting in the tv room. She looked down the hall and I could tell something caught her eye."
"She got up and said, 'Yaya is in her room,' and proceeded to go in my mom's room and shut the door."
"I could hear my daughter talking and laughing through the door. I was equal parts scared of and hoping to hear my mom too, but I didn't."
- ScarySuzy
Protective Older Brother
"My oldest son kept saying he had a baby sister in my belly. I found out two weeks later I was pregnant."
"I ended up miscarrying while at work about a month later. He was already sleeping and I hadn’t told my boyfriend at the time until I got home (and we were outside smoking so my oldest couldn’t have overheard)."
"I woke up the next morning and he was in bed with me and said, 'I’m sorry she had to leave you,' and gave me a big hug. I was SHOOK."
- youwouldtalkhuh
The Doll Whisperer
"I was at a silent auction and there was a really creepy 100-year-old doll that I bid on as a joke. It turns out nobody else wanted it, so I won. My wife and I were talking the whole time about how creepy this doll was."
"As I stood in line to pay for it, my daughter asked to hold the doll, so I gave it to her. A few older ladies starting coming up to her and saying things like, 'That doll is older than I am' and 'You’re so lucky to have such a pretty doll.'"
" I guess because my daughter had been listening to us talking, she would respond with things like, 'Did you hear that? She’s laughing at you.'"
" I tried so hard not to laugh at the look on their faces, but the last one got me. My daughter put her ear down to the doll's face and with a very serious look said to a lady, 'I think the doll just said the ‘F-word.'"
- blackwidowink
Unexplainable Memories
"Not my kid, but my friend's. They were across the country visiting family and out for a drive. Her four-year-old points down an old overgrown road (more of a dirt track) and said, 'That was where I used to go to school.'"
"She told him he didn't even go to school yet. She mentioned it to her brother when they drove by another day, and he told her that well down that track used to be a schoolhouse in the 1800s."
"The same kid was on a walk with Mom in our town around a fairly wooded pond. He asked his Mom if they could go another way. She said there was only one path and asked why."
"He responded, 'I don't like that man hanging from the tree.' Needless to say, they moved away from that area very quickly!"
- Beyarboo
Unnerving, To Say the Least
"I took my three-year-old on a flight this last summer. He’s been on an airplane several times in his short life so it’s not like it was something new to him. But as we took off he was explaining the process to me."
"'Mama we go fast and then up and up and then…' he stared straight ahead and put his hand on his chest and continued with, 'we fall dooooooooooown and (explosion noises) and there’s fire all over.'"
"And he sat for a solid beat just staring straight ahead with that little hand over his heart and his eyes far away before becoming his normal toddler self again. He hasn’t mentioned anything like it since."
- Nikiboomboom23
Not the Nighttime Routine We Were Expecting
"My daughter is three and is working on performing her own nighttime routines. We asked her how she gets ready for bathtime and gave her her stuffed bunny to demonstrate with. She takes the bunny and begins explaining the steps of her routine, mimicking the actions on the doll."
"'First you take off your pants...' She wiggles Rabbit’s legs."
"'Then you take off your shirt...' She wiggles Rabbit’s arms."
"'Then you take off your underwear...' She wiggles the legs again."
"'Then you take off your hands....' She pulls on Rabbit’s arm in a plucking motion."
"'Then you take off your arms...' Rabbit’s arms are wrenched immediately."
"'Then you take off your legs, your hair, your tummy, your face!' She gleefully laughs as she mimes ripping each part off of Rabbit."
"'All done!' She looks up at us with a smile. We are aghast."
- Dyshin
What in the 'Paranormal Activity'...
"When my boys were smaller, they had an imaginary friend called TrickerTrick (Trick or Trick maybe, never was clear), but my son was telling me about him shortly after we had moved from the old house (stuff happened there, noises and s**t like that)."
"So he was telling me that TrickerTrick was really tall and that he came from the old house. Sometimes, he took things that don't belong to him."
"I asked H (my younger son) if there was anything else, and he said, 'He doesn't like you at all, Daddy.'"
"I asked him why and H started looking nervous."
" J (older son, about six at the time) left the room. H just stood there and didn't say anything."
"I asked him if TrickerTrick was there then. H looked a bit to his left, then directly into my eyes and said, 'He said to say no.'"
- timechuck
...Oh
"Driving by a cemetery when my kid was about three years old, they asked, 'Who are all those people standing around there?'"
"There was no one standing anywhere in the cemetery."
- SippinPop
What a Relief!
"I nannied my niece when she was about one and a half years old. For like a few days in a row, I’d go to put her down for a midday nap, she’d start waving to the corner of the room behind the door and saying, 'Man, man.'"
" I could hear her on the monitor saying it when I’d closed the door too. She couldn’t speak well enough to explain further so I tried to figure out what she was seeing. I checked the door, made sure the monitor wasn’t doing some funny, etc."
"It was creeping me out and she seemed so distracted by it so finally on the third day I decided to close the door and sit in there with her to see what was going on."
"Turns out at that time of day, the sun was in a position to shine through a crack of the curtains and a hanging mobile in just the right way to create what looked like a hand shape on the wall. She was trying to say 'hand,' not man. Boy was I relieved. I adjusted the curtains and all was well, lol (laughing out loud)."
. what_the_a
Some of these accounts are truly chilling. There are stories here that are probably coincidences that could be explained away easily enough, but others could easily be cut straight into a horror movie!