40+ Creepy Kid Chronicles: Reddit Parents Share Spine-Chilling Stories

Embarking on the rollercoaster journey of parenthood brings its expected highs and lows, but what happens when the ride takes a spine-chilling turn? Join us as we delve into the hair-raising tales of parents who never anticipated the eerie side of raising their little ones.

From unsettling revelations to downright creepy encounters, many parents have witnessed their children say and do spooky things. These experiences leave parents wondering what's wrong with their little ones.

Many people shared such stories on Reddit, either opening up about a strange experience with their kid or an eerie tale from their childhood. Brace yourself for these 41 real-life stories that will leave you both captivated and unsettled.

Comments have been edited for clarity and grammar.

1. The Random Whisper

u/Blokie_McBlokeface: I realized my kid was creepy when he started whispering, just randomly to himself, right at the edge of hearing. It took us a while to work out what it was. It was like the scene in "The Sixth Sense."

2. Goodnight or Goodbye?

u/UnfortunateBirthMark: I was tucking in my two-year-old when he said, "Goodbye, Dad." I said, "No, we say goodnight."

He replied, "I know. But this time, it's goodbye." I had to check on him several times to ensure he was still there.

3. The Death Prediction

u/Racketmensch: While waiting at a crosswalk for the light to turn green, my 3-year-old asked why I didn't just cross right away.

I told him that I might get hit by a car and my life would end if I were not careful. He turned to me, saying, "But Daddy, your life won't end on the road. You would die in a fire."

4. The White Van

u/Tess47: My boys were about chest high. One day, I was in the kitchen doing dishes when I looked outside and saw both boys in the street talking to a man in a white van. A WHITE VAN.

I calmly called them back to the house and asked them what was happening. They said, "A guy lost his puppy and needed help finding him."

I kid you not. Good lord. Could it be any more textbook? We immediately had the 'stranger talk' again.

5. The Invisible Man

u/QuagmireDP: While I was changing my daughter in front of the open closet door, she kept looking around me and laughing.

I asked her what was so funny. She said, "The man." I asked, "Which man?" She then pointed at the closet and said, "The man with the snake neck."

I turned around, and nothing was there. I'm afraid to look into the history of my house to see if anyone ended their life in the closet. At least she wasn't scared.

6. My Creepy Kids

u/[deleted]: I have two kids, and they are both creepy. When my son was four, he told me he wished he could take my head to school with him.

A couple of weeks after my daughter's fifth birthday, I was putting her to bed, and she asked, "Why doesn't the lady in my wardrobe like you, Daddy?"

7. Monsters under the Bed

u/YeahLikeTheGroundhog: My 3-year-old daughter was going through the monsters under her bed phase. It lasted for weeks and was really wearing on her mother and me.

One night, after her mother tried to put her to bed, she tagged me in. After 30 minutes, I grew pretty frustrated.

In a last-ditch attempt, I promised my daughter that no monster was under her bed. She replied, "I know. Now they're behind you." After that, I let her sleep with us for a week.

8. The Man in the Basement

u/Jkinct: My 3-year-old son and I were about to go upstairs to put him and his 18-month-old brother to bed.

That's when he asked, "Daddy, what about the man in the basement?" I asked, "What man?" "The man, he came today. He's hiding until you go to sleep. He told me it's a secret," my son responded.

My wife and I looked at each other, creeped the heck out. She took the kids upstairs, and I went and checked the basement. Everything was fine, but that was legitimately scary.

9. My Toddler's Dark Room

u/[deleted]: I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of my 18-month-old running around her room.

Curious, I opened the door to her room but saw nothing. It was almost entirely dark, and no toddler was running around. I called out to her playfully, "Erika? Where did Erika go?" Silence.

And then, from behind me, "SSHHHHHHH!!" I almost screamed. She was standing, completely still and quiet, in a dark corner of the room the whole time.

She decided that shushing me as loudly as possible was a good idea. I lost ten years of my life. She's three now and continues to be the child out of a horror movie.

10. 'He's Always Watching'

u/jonuggs: Once, while visiting some friends on a farm, my buddy's youngest girl, around six then, was afraid of the chickens. I tried to explain that the chickens weren't there to hurt us, but she wasn't having it.

So, I was sitting around the fire pit, looking at one of the chickens a few feet in front of me, when I felt hot breath in my ear as she whispered, "See. He's always watching." That was horrific and hysterical all at once.

11. I Saw Someone in the Bathroom

u/Spookyredd: My 12-year-old came up to me, visibly shaken, and said she thought she saw someone in the bathroom.

I asked her to clarify, and she said it looked like someone ducked into the shower when she walked past. Mind you, it was just her and I at home then since my husband was at work.

So, we have a Doberman named Rango, and I had him follow me to the bathroom. My adrenaline was pumping hard as I quietly and slowly crept through the hallway towards the bathroom.

I stopped a few feet away from the door and looked at Rango. He looked at me, and I pointed to the bathroom.

I kid you not; he understood loudly and clearly what I wanted. He looked at the bathroom and slowly and carefully stalked towards it with the fur on his back raised.

When I saw him react like this, I was CONVINCED someone was in there, and my heart started racing. Once he made it over the bathroom threshold, he paused and leaned his body in as he sniffed the air, and one step at a time, he slowly crept in, leaning and sniffing.

Once he made it in, he became more comfortable and relaxed and looked in the shower, sniffing around, and then he just looked at me like, "Really?"

He did that huff thing dogs do through their nose and walked right past me out of the bathroom, looking somewhat irritated. But for good measure, I had him check the rest of the rooms just in case.

12. What Was That?

u/Flatbstrd: I scared my mom once when I was very young. My father was working the night shift, so he wasn't home at my bedtime.

When my mom put me to bed, I said, "Daddy came home." When she told me that Daddy was still at work, I answered, "But I saw Daddy's hand by the door."

My Mom grabbed me out of bed, checked the apartment, and found no one. And when she put me to bed, I just shrugged it off with, "Maybe it was just a piggy's hoof toes," and apparently was content with that explanation.

I don't remember this because I was very young (under three years old), but my mom told me the story and said she freaked out after the incident.

13. Burying Matchbox Cars

u/Legion213: Actually, me. My dad told me from at least two years old until I was about six or seven, I would bury matchbox cars in the backyard, replete with an elaborate funeral setup.

I'd dig a small rectangular hole several inches deep, line up the "survivors" around it, then slowly drive/lower the "dead" in and bury it.

He said there was no way I would've seen anything like that at that age, and he had no clue where I got it from. His eyes looked away in the distance as he said, "There must be hundreds of cars under that yard."

14. The White Wolves

u/darinfjc: My co-worker's four-year-old daughter always thought the water pipes rattling in the kitchen cupboards were "white wolves." The sound always scared her.

One day, she sat at the kitchen table and said, "Mom, the white wolves aren't bad... they're our friends!"

Her mom encouraged the idea by saying, "Yes! The white wolves are protecting us. They are our friends."

Then her daughter added, "They're our friends, but not the man who crawls on the floor and stands by my bed."

15. Pretend Daddy

u/TheSaladLeaf: My two-year-old daughter called me to her room about ten minutes after I said goodnight, etc.

She said, "Mummy, Daddy is watching me go to sleep." He wasn't. He was downstairs playing on his computer.

When I told her this, she replied, "No, I'm talking about pretend Daddy." She pointed at her wardrobe behind me in the dark room, got close, and whispered, "I see him."

I just ran right out of there. I thought, "Save yourself, kid. I am not hanging around to meet your pretend daddy."

16. The Little Silhouette with Horns

u/virgyboo22: My dad told me this story from when I was about four. He put me to bed after a bath with damp hair. Being young, I still had a habit of sneaking into my parents' bed at night, and this night was no different.

My dad slept on the side of the bed facing a window, and in the middle of the night, I got up to get into their bed, but I couldn't find space, so I decided to wake my dad to ask him to move over.

Now, imagine waking up to the sound of a child's voice, turning around to face the window, and all you see is a little silhouette with horns EVERYWHERE (the horns being my damp curly hair dried into weird bed-head).

My dad started freaking out and kicked my mom (giving her a charley horse), who also screamed, "WHAT'S WRONG? WHAT'S GOING ON?!?!!" Meanwhile, I climbed into bed and drifted peacefully to sleep.

17. The Witch

u/guactoast1: At my grandmother's old farmhouse in FL, her 4-year-old granddaughter looked at the ceiling and asked, "Who's that?"

My grandma replied, "Who is who, honey?" The little girl said, "There's a witch on the ceiling looking at us."

Grandma responded, "Well, is she a nice or mean witch? Because mean witches aren't allowed in our house."

"Well, she's smiling, but not in a nice way," the girl replied. She then watched something on the ceiling track toward the basement door and returned to her snack.

18. The Creepy Corner

u/elma3allem: We moved into a new apartment with my six-month-old boy. On the third night in, he was in my lap while my wife and I watched TV.

He stared at the empty corner and giggled as if someone was playing with him. He did that for 15 minutes. He did it almost daily in the same corner over the next six months. We moved out as soon as the lease ended.

19. The Unknown Guy

u/rheabs: When I was a little girl, I lost my calm when I saw some guy at the grocery store. It was unusual because I was generally quiet and well-behaved.

I never had to be taken out from somewhere for misbehaving, but it went to the point that we had to leave the store.

When my mom asked what was wrong when we got in the car, I told her he took me away from my first mom, hid me under his floor, and made me sleep for a long time until I woke up with my new mom.

I then refused to sit in the seat of the car on the ride home but insisted on cowering under the dashboard so he couldn't take me again. It freaked her out, as she is my biological mother, so obviously my "first" mom.

20. I Was a Different Baby

u/DecidedlyUnnecessary: My three-year-old son said, "Next time I'm a baby, I want to have green eyes."

I asked him if he had been a different baby before being who he currently is, and he squinted his eyes, looked at me like I was an idiot, and said, "Yes, Papa."

21. Playing Hide-and-Seek

u/megaberry13: When I was about three years old, my family and another family we were friends with rented a cottage on a lake.

I convinced my friend, who was also three then, to play hide-and-seek without telling anyone we were playing.

We hid in a shed by the water and quietly listened to our parents screaming our names and freaking out.

When I was older, my friend's parents told me they had never seen my dad so scared. Apparently, he was in the water trying to find us. My dad still hates to talk about that day. I was a terrible child.

22. Who's Hannah?

u/lurklurkgo3: My daughter was about three years old, looking at herself in a full-length mirror, when I said, "That's you there, Lucy."

She replied, "But I'm not Lucy, I'm Hannah." We don't know anyone named Hannah. Besides that, she had never heard that name in her life. She really meant it to and seemed quite confused.

23. 'The Funny Man'

u/GeneralJay421: My brother's two-year-old twins were in their room giggling and laughing at something a couple of weeks ago.

When I went in there, they were both staring at a corner of the room towards the ceiling. When I asked what was so funny, they both shrieked and said, "The funny man," and kept laughing.

24. The Late-Night Creepy Crawl

u/ickynicky27: One night, I was in bed, facing the hallway. Everything was dark. Then, I saw my five-year-old son's bedroom door open.

He walked out, stood facing me for a few seconds, and then started crawling on all fours down the hallway toward my room.

All I could see was his dark little figure coming towards me. It freaked me out so bad that I had to tell him to stop and get back up.

25. 'It's Not Her Fault'

u/matthewo: My father tells me this story of my childhood every once in a while. When I was around six years old, my dad's best friend ended his life. We'll call him "Joe" for the sake of the story.

It was a very rough and emotional time for my dad. Joe was my dad's best man at his wedding and the friend who was always there for him.

After my dad married, he and my mother left Joe and the town they were in to start a life elsewhere. After years of moving around California, my family eventually moved to Utah, where my father worked for a successful internet business.

Joe stayed behind in Washington. Because my family was so far away from their old life with Joe, there wasn't a lot of foresight/warning that Joe intended to end his life.

Joe's sister apparently blamed Joe's wife for it because they fought a lot. My father always said they were a passionate couple; yes, they would fight often, but he hardly knew two other individuals who were so completely in love. For this reason, he didn't believe it.

A few days after the unfortunate incident, Joe's widow called my father, sobbing about how she thought it was her fault.

After about an hour of trying to console her, he told her, "If there was a way for me to talk to Joe now, I guarantee you that he would tell you that he loved you and that it wasn't your fault that he ended his life."

Crying, she still didn't believe him, but she thanked him for the kind words and let my father go. My dad was distraught after that long, hysteric conversation.

He had been down in his office for a while and decided to come up and check on his kids while making a pot of coffee to divert his mind.

We were all supposed to be napping, but he thought he'd peek into our rooms to make sure we were safe/maybe try to add a little smile or brightness to his day.

Sure enough, when my dad got to my room, I was fast asleep on my bed. He went to my brother's room, and he was also sleeping.

Finally, he checked on my sister, who was sleeping as smugly as an angel. He returned to my room and into the kitchen to make some coffee. As he walked by my room, he noticed a whimper.

Curious, he turned around, entered my room, and found me weeping. I was five years old, so the way I was crying seemed odd to him.

Usually, a five-year-old would cry drastically over dramatically. I wasn't. I was just sitting on the side of my bed, weeping. My dad entered my room and asked, "Matty, what's up? Why are you crying?"

Then, I stopped crying momentarily, looked up at him with teary eyes, and said, "Rick, it's not her fault. I love her. It's not her fault." With that, I stopped crying, rolled back onto my bed, and slept again.

26. Giggling in the Middle of the Night

u/linham18: It was one in the morning, and I was asleep while my wife was in the living room, reading.

Suddenly, the baby monitor was blaring my 16-month-old son's laughter in my ear, so I jumped up and ran into his room.

He stood in his crib, pointing at the corner of the room, and giggled hysterically. I just stared at him for a few seconds before I grabbed him and put him in bed with me.

27. My Imaginary Friend

u/[deleted]: My mum told me I had an imaginary friend or something I would talk to at night when I was younger.

He was called Kevin, but I couldn't pronounce it, so I called him Kebin. One of the stories about Kebin revolved around my Mum's belief in not lying to her kids. As a result, she never wanted me to believe in Santa. But apparently, this Kebin guy told me everything.

Despite her never telling me anything about it, I suddenly woke up one day and told my mum all about it. Then, I said, "Oh, Kebin told me." I'm sure there are more stories about Kebin. I was a strange kid.

28. The Field with Rocks

u/twin_mom16: I was driving in the car with my 4-year-old a couple of weeks ago when he said, "Mom, I want to go to the field with the rocks."

When I asked him what field he was talking about, he explained, "The rocks with people's names on them."

"What? I have no idea what you're talking about," I responded. "The rocks with the names of the dead people, Mom!" he said.

"Oh, the cemetery? Why do you want to go there?" I asked. "Yes! I want to go dig up the dead people and look at them!" my child said.

He would also wake up in the middle of the night and stand at my bed, staring at me until I woke up. He's a sweet kid, though. He's just weirdly obsessed with dead people.

29. I Was a Creepy Child

u/TIALP: I think that my parents tried to pretend that I wasn't creepy. When I was 8, I asked for the "Alien" trilogy for Christmas on VHS.

I loved horror films. My other favorite series was the "Jaws" series. My favorite games were the "Silent Hill" series.

While looking at some of my old papers from elementary school, I discovered that I wrote a book for school called "Aliens Took Over the Internet" circa 1997.

30. He Knew There Was an Unborn Baby

u/Jmersh: My wife was getting my 2-year-old son up one morning. He was standing in his bed/crib when she went to get him.

As she said good morning and walked over to him, he raised her shirt and tilted his head to the side. She asked him what he was doing, and he said, "Looking for my baby sister in your tummy."

She laughed it off as a weird kid imagination thing. We found out later that she was 2-weeks pregnant at that time, and it was, in fact, a girl.

We had never really talked about where babies come from, nor did we talk about having another child around him. It was so spooky.

31. The Third Day in This World

u/Feltedskullpuppets: My three-day-old infant was sleeping with rapid eye movements (dreaming). I watched her crack a smile, which deepened and turned into a belly laugh. What does a three-day-old infant have to dream about that cracks them up?

32. The Hysterical Laughter Sessions

u/SeraphineGG: When I was a baby, every day without fail, around 5-6, I would start laughing and babbling to myself like I was talking to my friends.

I could be facing a wall, on a highchair, chilling somewhere, or any place, but no matter what, once it reached 5 p.m.-6 p.m., I would start laughing hysterically and interact with no one. I didn't believe my parents till they showed me some of what they caught on tape. It's bizarre.

33. The Creepy Creature

u/catch22milo: Around four or five months ago, around 3:00 a.m., I was awoken by a weird growling sound. Disoriented and in the dark, I couldn't figure out what the sound was.

I had fallen asleep on the couch in the living room, which added to my confusion. I thought the cat had caught something, but I had no idea.

As my vision came around, this three-foot grotesque-looking shadow appeared a few feet before me. It was just standing there growling. Creepy.

Even though, in reality, it only took me a few seconds to figure out what was going on, I imagine my appearance would have been that of someone who was visibly shaken.

It was my son. My three-year-old son had snuck out of bed at three in the morning, found his Hulk mask in the dark, and decided to find Daddy to play superheroes.

I guess his idea of playing was to do a Hulk growl two feet from my sleeping face until I woke up in a panic.

He ended up doing the same thing to my wife a few weeks later, which was way more hilarious to me.

34. Dance for Me

u/Chester_A_Arthritis: Not my child, but my 3-year-old niece told my wife to dance in the middle of the room while she hid in a closet, watching through the crack in the door.

35. Only One Grandma!

u/kotacub: When I was young, around two years old, my grandma was in the hospital, dying of cancer. Obviously, I had no idea what was going on.

However, one day, when my mother and aunt were watching me, I suddenly looked at them and said, "Only one Grandma."

They tried convincing me otherwise, that no, I had two grandmas, but I kept repeating that line. Then the phone rang. It was my uncle calling to tell my mother that my grandmother had passed away a few minutes ago.

36. 'Po and the Tape Monster'

u/TheKrazyKrab23: My little sister had some creepy moments when we were younger. She often claimed that "people" were in her bathroom at night talking and watching her.

She called them "Po and the Tape Monster." There are a couple of stories regarding them, both funny and creepy.

One night, she woke up scared and went to my parents' room to sleep with them. Before she went back to sleep, she used their bathroom, and when she came out, she said, "Why are there people in your bathroom, Mommy?"

That night, Dad was out of town, and Mom still swears this was the scariest thing any of my siblings ever did.

37. I Will Hypnotize You!

u/_dwelf: When I was four, I learned about hypnotism. I don't remember how, but apparently, I became fascinated by the idea of having mind control abilities.

One day, my mom says my grandpa loaded me into the car for one of our regular grocery store outings, only for him to return "furious" an hour later.

After he calmed down, he told my mom that I refused to stop staring him down in the rearview mirror with a very serious look on my face.

He had asked me to stop several times but said I never really replied. I just kept staring menacingly. Then, he said, suddenly, I looked into his eyes and said, "Papa, I'm going to 'hippo-tize' you. I'm going to put my toe… in your mouth."

My mom said she thought it was funny then but couldn't laugh because my grandfather was seriously enraged.

38. People in the Cemetery

u/flyzapper: I'm a parent of toddlers and kids now, and I have a creepy story from last year. We were driving with my then three-year-old son in the car and stopped at a red light next to a cemetery.

Out of nowhere, my son looked at the cemetery and said, "There are people lying down there, and they can't get up."

My wife asked my son what he was talking about, and he pointed to the cemetery and said, "All of the people lying down in the park are stuck."

My wife and I just looked at each other in silence, completely freaked out. At this point in our son's life, there had been no deaths in the family, and we had never discussed death with him. I'm still creeped out when I think about it.

39. The 'Other Family'

u/ACasualFormality: My 3-year-old talked a lot about her "other family." She spoke about how she had a brother (she doesn't) and missed her old house and her old mom and dad.

So, one day, I was humoring her, asking details about them, when I asked, "So what happened to them? Why aren't you with them anymore?"

She let out this huge sigh, looked down at the floor, and said in this really defeated-sounding voice, "They're not alive anymore."

To be clear, she has no other family. Her older sister was adopted, so we wonder if that prompted the 'other family' talk.

The other theory is that all the Pixar movies they watch usually involve some family member's demise. She doesn't know anybody who passed away, but she's got this story.

40. The Other Mother

u/princess_monoknokout: Shortly after we moved to our new house, my son and I were playing, and he was talking to himself.

When I asked him about it, he said he was talking to another mommy who used to live right here. Curious, I asked about her kids, and he said she had two boys and two girls.

The creepy part is that we bought the house from four adult siblings. Yes, two men and two women. Their mom had lived there for 50 years and recently died.

There was no way my son would have known this. He was just under the age of three at the time. I freaked out upon hearing his response and said, "Well, we bought this house, and she doesn't live here anymore."

My son replied, "She said don't worry, she's just visiting. She's going away now." I never brought it up again.

41. 'Bubbles' in My Room

u/deftide: My wife's mom recently passed away, and we inherited most of her stuff. Her favorite blanket, more like a quilt, is now in my son's (age 4) room on his bed.

Last week, just after 3 a.m., he came into our room complaining of "bubbles" keeping him awake. He was upset but not crying about it.

So, I took him back to his room, and of course, I couldn't see anything even though he was pointing them out and following them around the room.

I asked him where the "bubbles" came from, and he said they came from the blanket. I had started putting the pieces together at this point, but I wasn't convinced.

I picked up the blanket and asked the bubbles to stop while making him laugh to lighten the mood, which calmed him down. He allowed me to tuck him back into his bed.

I returned to my room and explained all this to my wife. We chalked it up to our kid's imagination. Five minutes later, our son returned, a bit more upset this time, saying that the "bubbles" wouldn't let him sleep.

Now, my wife got up and took him back to his room while he pointed out bubbles walking down the hall.

A few minutes later, she returned feeling emotional after getting him down. Clearly, she was affected by all of this, and now, I was freaking out a bit. It took me a while before I could fall back asleep, with the rest of the night being uneventful.

In the morning, my son entered our room and, without being prompted, said, "I was sad when Mimi (wife's mom) left last night, but she said I love you before she left."

My jaw hit the floor, and I could see the tears swelling in my wife's eyes. I am convinced she came to visit, and the "bubbles" were how he was describing orbs.

This spine-chilling expedition into the world of spooky childhood stories shows us that children can sometimes say or do things that leave parents with many unanswered questions.

Have you ever experienced something similar being a parent that left you speechless? Or were you the creepy child who always said unexpected, spooky things? Feel free to share your experiences in the comments section.