20 Scary Stories Of Children Having Imaginary Friends That Are Just Perfect For The Spooky Season

With Halloween approaching, I’m sure you can now feel its vibe. The wind is becoming colder. The crispy orange autumn leaves are closely imitating the colors of the pumpkin decorations in your local neighborhood. And before you know it, children are already knocking on your door trick-or-treating!

#1

One night, I was reading a story to our 3-year-old, and he started laughing. He was looking over my shoulder, so I asked him what he was laughing at, and he answered, ‘The little girl by the door is being silly!’ I looked back, terrified of what I might see, and as I did, he stated, ‘Oh! She ran away!’ Needless to say, I called my husband at work and told him I would not be sleeping a minute that night!

Source: anon

#2

Image source: Gemski13, Zac Porter

My cousin was a few years younger than me and he had an imaginary friend called ‘Mooky’.

Mooky wasn’t human, but some kind of alien/monster thing.

Used to freak me out when I’d hear a noise behind me at my grandparents house and my cousin would calmly say “It’s only Mooky, he just wants to see you.”

#3

Image source: anon, Craig Whitehead

When my son was about 3 years old, we were living with my mom in an older apartment. I had always gotten a weird vibe from it — the atmosphere felt heavy and a little oppressive, but I assumed it was just because of the age. However, my son started waking up in the middle of the night and would talk to his ‘friend,’ who he described as the ‘Hat Man.’ He would always wake up and tell Hat Man that he didn’t want to go play with him because he was supposed to be asleep, and that he’d see him tomorrow. This was always followed by him waking me up and asking for a glass of water. I knew it wasn’t just an imaginary friend when, one night, I heard him talking, and when he said he’d see him tomorrow, the door to his room closed on its own. This stopped completely once we moved out.

#4

Image source: doesitfeelbad, Christopher Burns

When I was little it was pretty firmly established that I had an imaginary friend named “Other”

Other had the same name as me so I just called him Other.

I would tell my mom that Other was being mean to me and wants to steal dads bike.

I remember I told my father that Other was very mad at him for hurting me (He was an abusive piece of work) and he literally threw me across the room.

I asked my mom about it as an adult and she told me my father had a brother that I was named after and wasn’t told about because shortly before I was born he died in a motorcycle accident

#5

Image source: professor_dog, freestocks

Purple mommy. When my son was first learning to talk, he would tell us about something called “purple mommy”. It could be an imaginary friend, but these details are a little bit creepy.
Here’s a few of the purple mommy details . Purple mommy is all purple with long hair and bright all white eyes(at the time he mixed up purple with black, so he could have meant she was all black) . Purple mommy picks him up at night, and turns off the lights. We would often find my son out of his crib in the morning, which would mean him crawling over the railing and to the ground, at a time when he was barely walking. Definitely found the lights in his room off a few times too, even though hes terrified if the dark. . Purple mommy needs a bandage because she has blood everywhere.

.Purple mommy has no smile, meaning a mouth

. Purple mommy can take her head off. . Purple mommy really doesn’t like daddy.

He told us all of this stuff for maybe a year or a little more. If we ever asked where she was, hed always point to the same spot. A corner of the room behind his open closet door. He would also wake up crying almost every night during this time. Once, during a really rough night, my wife went to ask him whats wrong, and his answer was “purple mommy wont let me sleep.”

#6

Image source: Travelgrrl, Sandra Seitamaa

Not an Imaginary Friend per se, but my niece as a toddler made a pretty convincing case that she was reincarnated. From the time she could lisp her first words, she carried on about someone called “Tertha” or “Trutha” or something odd like that. Sometimes she called herself “Tertha” and a fair number of her dolls had those or similar names.

By the time she was 2 or three, she talked non-stop about “Her other Mommy” and “Her sister” and how she (Tertha) and her “Other Mommy and sister were in a car accident and then were in the hospital and her other Mommy died”. I mean, she wouldn’t quit about it.

My sister neither discouraged her from telling the stories nor encouraged her. She would always finish up with the punchline “Then after my other Mommy died, then I was in your stomach!” Imagine a little child, big eyes looking up at you, rattling on about this.

She pretty much stopped by the time she was 6, and by 8 didn’t remember this at all. We figured she had forgotten her reincarnation.

#7

Image source: LibriBot, Niamat Ullah

My son, then about two or three, used to tell us about his imaginary friend Johnny, who wore all green, including a green hat. One time, we were driving by the cemetery and my son pointed out the window and exclaimed, “that’s where Johnny lives”. He was very little and didn’t know what a cemetery was, so we explained to him that no one lives there, it’s a place for people who died.
That’s when he told us that “Johnny was a soldier who died in a place called Nam. “

#8

Image source: DarthSangheili, Zac Porter

My youngest niece had an imaginary friend and when my sister told me about it she said “ask her what she looks like”

“Ok, what’s she look like?”

“Broken pieces.”

“…Oh.. why’s she broken sweety?”

“She fell from our tree”

Nope. Sorry sis you’re on your own.

#9

Image source: erikagirardi, Jelleke Vanooteghem

A baby cousin and her family moved into a new apartment in the Middle East. Baby cousin would go out to the balcony and play with someone, according to her mom. Talk, run around, laugh, etc. Mom asked who she’s talking to, and she said it was her new friend. Mom got concerned and told her to stop playing there. Later, the dad started feeling like a child would come sit on his lap when he sat on the couch. Felt the weight/warmth of a child but there was nothing there. IIRC they would hear kids’ voices and stuff would disappear and all, too. They moved shortly after.

#10

Image source: NotAnotherWhatever, Yoann Boyer

I’ve mentioned this before, but my sister Ashley used to get visited at night by a dead girl with long dark hair and spider hands (yes, this pre-dated The Ring, yes, I’m old AF). She moved out the second she turned 18, never looked back.

20-odd years later, our half-brother Trevor moved into her old room. It wasn’t long after Trev started sleeping on the sofa, or with the lights on, and told us about his new “friend” that he didn’t like. She was a dead girl who had long dark hair, an old nightgown, and spider hands.

Needless to say, none of us offered to trade rooms with him.

#11

Image source: sciencenerd86, Caleb Woods

When my daughter was a toddler she randomly started talking about a man named Don. She always described him the same way and didn’t seem scared at all, despite bringing him up every day. She didn’t go to daycare and we didn’t know anyone named Don. Then one day she got completely freaked out, wouldn’t walk around the house alone in case she ran into Don, wouldn’t sleep in her own room, and would talk about how she hated him because he said “mean words” to her all the time. About a year into “mean Don” we bought a new house. Once we moved she never spoke of him again.

#12

Image source: Rook_45, Cosmic Timetraveler

A kid said he didnt want to go to church because “my invisible friend says he cant follow me in there”

#13

Image source: anon, Kinga Cichewicz

My sister and I had the same exact imaginary friend when she was 6 and I was 5. Her name was Narni. It would freak our older brother and parents out that we both would talk to her and knew exactly where she would be. They would wonder how we both would interact with her at the same time and that our descriptions of her matched. We would even talk about how she would get angry or jealous. Our parents thought for sure that it was the spirit of a child that had passed

#14

Image source: paxlaina, Michał Parzuchowski

Most of my extended family live around the same area so we have lot’s of gatherings.
For the backstory, one of my uncles (lets call him Steve) lost a childhood friend when he was ~7.
Steve and his friend (let’s call him Jack) were having a play-date one after noon and got a bit dirty in some mud. So Steve’s mother gave Jack a pair of Steve’s shoes to borrow. When Jack’s father came to pick him up after the play date they forgot to put back on Jack’s shoes and Jack accidentally got into the car with the borrowed shoes still on. Tragically the father and Jack got into a terrible car crash on the way home which killed 7-year old Jack. The family had him buried in the shoes he had borrowed from Steve. (i’m not sure why)

Fast forward 30 years to a family gathering in 2010.
My 6 year old cousin Sara is playing alone with toys in a quieter room of the house. My Uncle Steve comes up to her and asks her what she is playing. Sara responds saying that she is playing with a friend. Holding back a smile, Steve asks who her imaginary friend is. Sara continues to play while saying that she is playing with his friend Jack, and that “he is sorry he forgot to give your shoes back”.
My Uncle’s jaw nearly dropped. He had not talked about Jack in years, let alone tell that story to a 6 year old.

No one had brought up Jack that day nor at any family gathering recently. Every time i remember this incident i get chills.

#15

Image source: Biggusparrot, Chris Cooper

My youngest sister(4 at the time) had an imaginary friend named Paris Jaris. My dad had built her a small playhouse in our backyard where my mom could see and hear her while she was in the kitchen. My sister would have tea parties and such with her imaginary friend. One day mom heard her say “don’t worry, as long as I’m alive they won’t hurt you”. She paused and said “well if you do that then I can’t help you, it’s not nice to kill people”. When my mom asked her what that was about my sister said “sometimes I have to tell Paris to be a nice person or he can’t visit anymore”. We moved not to long afterwards and she didn’t get a new playhouse.

#16

Image source: uwu_SenpaiSatan, Andrew Seaman

So this is actually my story of when I was a kid. I had an imaginary friend named Derek who was a carbon copy of me. We were completely identical. I played with Derek for years, longer than what normal kids do. But he would always look at my mom and older sister with a sense of sadness. Eventually he went away. 23 years later im digging through my moms safe to grab some paperwork she’s kept for me and I see a stillborn death certificate for a boy named Derek who shared my birthday. It was only then I found out I was actually a twin and my twin, Derek, died during birth. Creepy right?

#17

My son had an imaginary friend that was an angel. I’d always heard that angels would convince kids to go with them so I was not comfortable at all when he would tell me about this angel. Come to find out, a child had apparently drowned in the tiny pond in the far corner of the yard. So maybe the dead child’s angel was looking for a playmate? Yeah, I had that pond filled in with dirt, real quick.

Source: Heemsah

#18

Image source: lilpigperez, Jan Baborák

Was taking my 3 year old niece for ice cream one evening. I strapped her into her car seat in the backseat. As I started driving, my niece asks if Jacob (imaginary friend) could get an ice cream, too? I jokingly said, “Jacob can get his own ice cream.” I laughed, and said, “Just kidding – we’ll get Jacob an ice cream.”
She didn’t respond so I looked in the rear view mirror. I couldn’t see very much because it was dark. What I could see was my niece’s face. She looked angry and I was about to reassure her that I was kidding but I realized she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at something near my ear, towards the back of my head.
Then she says, “I said NO, Jacob. Be nice. NO. She didn’t mean it.”

#19

When I was six I had a friend who was a little younger than me and her imaginary friend was not a very nice person. She used to tell me how her imaginary friend, “Mr. G” made her “hurt between her legs” and how he “tasted funny and made funny noises”. She was absolutely terrified of him. She told me Mr. G was very, very tall, with no hair, and very mean eyes. After a few sleepovers my mom wouldn’t let me have sleepovers at her house anymore and then she and her mom moved away. Her father didn’t go with them. He was a very tall man with no hair and mean eyes.

Source: carmelacorleone

#20

Not an imaginary friend but hopefully creepy enough to count.

My daughter is 2 and since she could talk she has always chatted happily to herself in her crib as she drifts off. It’s super cute. Usually just things like:
“go see nana? Go see papa?”
“Hello Aunnie. Hello Tim” (her aunt and uncle)
My wife and I loved to listen in on the baby monitor and talk about how cute she was. Then one night she said:
“Satan!”
In that tone that only little girls have that is so sweet it chills the blood when they say something like this.
It evolved over a week into like “it’s satan!”
Or “satan and the son!”
OR my personal favorite: “good night everyone. Ah satan!”

My wife eventually cracked the case. Our daughter loves this book called “Good Night Everyone” she’s also really into the planets. The last line of the book is unsurprising: “good night everyone.” On the following page are drawings of the planets. We’d go through them from the edges of the solar system to the sun. She’d always happily call out “Saturn” as I suspect it’s rings made it easy for her to spot.

#TLDR 2 year old was quoting the last line of a book and excitedly naming Saturn and the Sun. Not communing with the Lord of Hell

Source: Septiimus