“Mommy, did you hear someone say hello?”
Mira walked over to where I was sitting and asked that question. She had been standing by the door, watching for the bus, and just before that I had noticed her head snap up from looking at her feet, as if slightly startled, followed by her looking all around as if she had heard something.
“No. I didn’t hear anything,” I replied.
She looked lost in thought, somewhere between puzzled and frustrated. She took a few steps back to the door, looking out again to make sure no one was out there. “Are you sure you didn’t hear anything?” she asked again.
“Yes, I’m sure. Did you hear someone say hello, Mira?”
She nodded her head, frowning. “I was standing by the door and I heard a voice say ‘Hello’ quietly but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.” Then she added, hesitantly, “Sometimes I hear things that my friends can’t hear, too. They don’t believe me when I tell them I heard it.”
At this point I was curious as to what she’s been hearing. I asked her to tell me what she hears that others don’t hear. She told me she often hears someone saying her name, quietly but clearly, although sometimes she hears other things and can’t always tell what the voice is saying. It’s happened at home and at school, when she’s by herself and with others around her. She was hesitant to tell me the details, and I think she worried that I’d think she was crazy.
I then asked her what the voice who said hello sounded like. Was it a girl’s voice or a boy’s voice? Did the voice sound nice or mean?
“It’s a scratchy voice. I can’t tell if it’s a boy or girl. It’s a little weird, but I don’t think it’s mean. It kinda sounds like Mr. Invisible Man’s voice.” She then tried to imitate the scratchy voice, which sounded totally creepy to me.
Mr. Invisible Man was a make-believe nuisance that we blamed much of her clumsiness on when she was younger. The kid has a natural ability for tripping over nothing, falling down unexpectedly from a standing position, and dropping things even with a strong grip. Never would I have thought that Mr. Invisible Man now had a voice that she recognized, or that he was actually real to her.
Way to start out a morning, right? Especially so close to Halloween!
I could see she was bothered by this (and I was starting to get uncomfortable as well), so whether or not I thought she was actually hearing voices, I wanted to give her some comfort. I suggested that maybe the voice was her great-grandma Polly (Aaron’s grandmother), who passed away almost a year ago. Polly was a woman of strong faith, and equally strong devotion to her family. “Were you thinking about grandma Polly recently?” I asked.
Mira’s eyes brightened a little. “When I woke up, I was thinking about when we played a game with grandma Polly at the restaurant.”
“Maybe that memory brought her closer to you, and she wanted to tell you hi so you knew she was still with you?”
Mira thought about that for a moment, then smiled. “Yeah, even though she’s gone, she’s not really gone ’cause she still lives in our hearts. Maybe my heart called to her and so she came to say hi.”
Oh, my sweet girl.
I think she felt better knowing that I took her seriously and didn’t think she was making it up or crazy. She told me more about how this may have been grandma Polly saying hello, but she’s been hearing voices say her name before grandma Polly had died. At that point, the bus arrived (the one time I wish it wasn’t later than it already was!), and she skipped down the driveway to go to school, completely unfazed at disembodied voices greeting her.
I got both kids onto the bus, came back inside the quiet, empty house, and immediately felt creeped out.
Mira is a little girl with very deep thoughts. She ponders this kind of stuff all the time. Cordy has few questions about death and is scared of it, but Mira often asks about death, the idea of a soul, and remaining close to those we love when we die.
When I told Aaron about the morning’s events, he reminded me that Mira somehow has a strong faith in some kind of god, even though we’re not particularly religious. We’re a mixed-faith family, with Jewish/Christian backgrounds and Unitarian/atheist/agnostic beliefs, and generally want our kids to choose for themselves if they want to have faith or not.
And while she knows and will tell us that monsters and zombies aren’t real, she draws the line at ghosts and believes they are very real. No matter what we tell her, ghosts are real. And Santa Claus – he’s also still real for her.
Does Mira have some kind of a gift to hear ghosts, or is her imagination running away with her in the Halloween spirit? I don’t know. But I believe that she believes she hears them, and so I’ll respect her belief. As long as she doesn’t feel threatened and isn’t frightened, I’ll support her and help her try to make sense of it if she wants my help. Or I’ll let her explain it to me if she’d rather. She’s the one hearing things, so she’s the better judge of what she’s experiencing.
This happened last week, and she hasn’t mentioned it to me again since then. But since then I’ve become more aware of when I hear her talking to herself – short, one-sided interactions of a few words here and there. I wonder if she’ll continue to hear the voices or if she’ll grow out of it?
I’ll admit that this freaked me out a little. Not only that it brings up questions of unseen forces, but also if it’s somehow real, I want to know who is speaking to my child.
Has anyone else had a child that admitted they saw or heard things that others couldn’t? How did it affect him/her, and did he/she grow out of it?
I have never HEARD voice/ghosts but I have seen two in my life. I swear I am not certifiable! The first was when I was around 5. I was at my grandmothers house. The living room was off a hallway that led to the den. I was playing on the floor and saw a man in a black coat and hat walk by. I got up to see who it was but there was no man in the house, especially not one wearing a black coat and hat.
Never saw him again. I did have a great uncle that died in that house and he always wore a black trench coat, so…???
The second was not about 12 years ago. We had been given a hand me down station wagon from a family friend as we needed a second car and didn’t have money to buy one. I was the main driver. I’ll never forget driving down the road and I glanced in the rear view mirror and there was an old man in a black hat sitting in my back seat! nearly crashed the car as I turned around to see who the hell was in my car…but no one was there. This happened to me more times than I could count! We eventually gave the car away and the new owners never reported any ghostly encounters and it’s never happened in any car we’ve had since.
I don’t know what to make or Mira and her voice…see if it goes away and don’t watch Amityville Horror!
My daughter is seven. For years, she has told a story about my friend’s sister who died when I was a kid. Whenever she brings it up, she says that she heard the story at my mom’s house when she was three and it was my friend who was staying there that told her the story. She often asks me to tell her about this child. I have no idea idea what she is talking about and neither does my mom. There has never been anyone staying at my parents when my kids are there and we don’t know anyone who lost a child when I was a kid. My daughter also has night terrors and sleep walks. When she was sleep walking, she used often tell stories about the people watching her in her room or talks to a “boy in her room”. The boy is sad because his dad was mean to him. There is never anyone in her room and I’ve searched it before to make sure. Does she see something that I don’t? I have no idea. But it was rather unsettling the first few times it happened. We’ve become more used to it now and she rarely tells us stories like that. She seems to be outgrowing it for the most part. I won’t be sad to see the stories go, but I still wonder sometimes about the stories she’s told. They are too out there for a child to come up with on her own.
Hi, de-lurking here. I have been reading your blog since Cordy was very small, but I hardly ever comment.
I was the child who heard and saw stuff that others didn’t. Not much, though, because even that scared me deeply. Later I became a Christian (Baptist church) and learned to pray. The fear is not gone yet, but at least I know what to do when I feel that there is someone else in the empty room – praying will help. Our oldest adopted son also claims to see things that other people cannot see. He is 8 now and has said that praying helps him, too.
Maybe you could teach Mira praying or talking to the good forces, whatever she believes into at the moment, in case the voices should start scaring her?
Sorry about the bad English, it not my first language.
About 6 years ago, I started hearing a voice/feeling a presence in our old house – a calm sounding old man. I never said a word to anyone about it because I felt crazy telling people I saw and heard a ghost. Carson was six years old at the time and yelled out from his bedroom while asleep "Mommy, please tell that man to stop talking to me." a couple different times. It freaked me out! But the kicker is when I had a friend sleeping on the couch downstairs who ran up to my room in a panic in the middle of the night because he too heard a man's voice saying "Oh, we have a visitor."
It was at the same time that my grandparents (whom I was very close to and Carson is named after) were in their final stages of life. They died a few months later. I always wonder if there was a connection.
My 14 year old daughter has been hearing voices in her room for the past 2 months last night she heard crawling. She says she also sees s man and always having nightmares about her getting kidnapped
Hi,
I just read your story. I know you posted this a long time ago but I have some experience with this. May I ask you if anything new has happened? I know some things and this exact same thing was happening to my girlfriends niece.
James.
MY daughter is 14 – we have a man, woman, 2 children and my friend s ghosts in the house, she has now sort out pushed out of seeing them, but shes still hears the little girl calling her from my bedroom CARMi, freaks her out as she does not like my room
This story sounded quite similar to what my little sister, Kira, now 10 has experienced at our parents' house which they moved into when she was about 3. Our grandmother died from a heart attack in the house and our grandpa died the next year in a hospital. He has played tricks on my mom in the past, like moving a dowl rod into the sliding glass door from a couple feet away, which locked her out while I was watching my sister on the other side of the house. He probably isn't what was messing with Kira when she was young, and what still disturbs her in memory now, though. When she was around 5 years old, she would hear these voices and people related sounds, which she called "The Invisible." They would talk using my dad's voice (who is a truck driver that is away for a few weeks at a time) when he was several states away, and my own voice while I was in college an hour and a half away. She also saw "Mr. Nobody" at this time, which was a face that would come out of the wall, especially out of places that are now covered up with family pictures, which seemed to stop it. We are also a family of agnostics, with parents that have allowed me to explore religion in my own way. She also has a strange pull toward what started out as Christianity (we live in the bible belt) but which has morphed into general spirituality. I wondered if what she was experiencing was real or not, as I was only coming for short visits on weekends, ect.,
One day my mom called me with a really strange story that I have attributed to "The invisible". She was at home while Kira was in school, taking a nap in the early afternoon. She woke up to the sound of my dad walking into the house, going into the spare bedroom and he even started snoring. She got up and left the house to get her from school at 3:30, with the sound of my dad snoring still going on. When she came home, nobody was there. She called my dad, frustrated that he came home and took off again without bothering to talk to her first. He was confused as he was in Texas, while our house is in NW Kansas. A very strange case of what I assume was "The Invisible" mimicking a family member yet again.
My two boys see the same thing they said in my apt an than my daughter was telling me that wen she goes to bad she hear like a person speakeing to her in her ear but it said like a chipmunk. An like a radio. Playn backward. Though i dnt what to think or say. An also my two boy see a – psychiatrist and a therapist counselor for seeing scary ghost an hearing voice. Telling them what to do can u please help me an explain. To me what else can i do to give them more help. Me a little nit more my to boys are taken medication they had dne on my kids eeg ct ect: i dont understand what going on here they never went threw this at all so we more here to miami stuff just started happening to them …
Let me tell you this story about what happen to my son im school the principal call me to pick my son up from school i came to the school an my son was in her office an staring at the other door talking to yourself shook his head as in yes also he answer hisself the principal told me to look what he is doing I looked an i and I asked my son who are you talking to why you answering yourself so i want to get help for him i took him to a children hospital an explain to them what happen to him an a social worker spoke to him an aske him about what just happen an also asked him what does this thing u r seeing and speaking to tell u what to do he said hurt other chidren …..one day i took him bk to school an i pick him up on a dismissals. Time when we walk out of school he told me mom my friend live right the which that a cross his school i said ok but than he said she right there mom i look an than look around i dont see no one hunny so he said mom she goes to my school sai hi mom to her but i tell him hunny were is she i dont see her so he put his head down an said mom will never believe me ..
It hurt to see my son like this i need to understand why is my three childern is seeing an hearing thing
Can u please give me a good answer to my questions
Thank you an god bless you
I have had this experience always the same time 1-3:30pm feel a presence of fear usually I’d have the same night terror after waking up and hearing it at the door my daughter saying “mommy?” I’m wide awake its loud and clear and very real sound and presence. A few times it imitated my husband. He leaves for work early I go back to sleep only to wake up to sound of him still getting ready walking or on couch. I come out and he’s no there wayyyy weird imitating loved ones. The two nightmeres it uses to get fear are one my child’s not breathing or two my door is closed and banging on it. Praying used to nake it worse when it was happening or I wouldn’t be able to get my words out they’d be a ll slow and slurred so I couldn’t rebuke. I know its not the house xause it happened in my other appartment to.
I had a few stages my youngest years that i heard voices, now im 18 and havent have them for over 10 years. I dont think its something that always needs to be addressed with meds. Maybe first start out not outting alot of attention on it but keep an eye on them, making people feel as though something is wring with them and they need help is not always the way to go. In alot of caees it could make it worse and bring negitive attention toward something that may just need time, love and understanding. There have been a lot of cases that the voices stop on there own. I did tell my mom when i was a child what was going on she acknowledged what i said but didnt seem to concered she asked a few questions gave me her best advice and didnt rush to get a strangers advice, youre childern need you, expescially right now, not a stranger not give them drug. I say it might need time because i was a case that all i needed was time and for someone to believe me amd not think i was crazy. I still to this day know that i heard the things i did but still can not explian. If i had to explaian i would say i channeled spirits, because i had such a free and open mind. Which in my opinion could be ok or not so ok. I would start to worry if they started being mean to other childern or trying to harm themselves. I guess my point is when you take them to get medical help we should keep in mind that we are sending them to aomeone who is doing there job, to prescibe people with illnesses and medicane. When you know that you know youre kids more you should give them a chance, believe what they are telling you but maybe not put so much worrying into it until it becomes more of a concern than just hearing voices. It could be caused by stress, or just simply them wanting youre attention even if its bad attention. My point being youre childern need you to love and support them, not treat them as tho they have issues that need meds. Also there are medicines that can cause hallutionations so if they are on any, maybe look at all the side effects wvem if they are rare ones.
Once when I was 3, I got into a “fight” with my grandma. I was standing in front of her door with the door closed. Then all of a sudden a wooden ruler came flying at me and quickly I moved, thank goodness! I never got hurt. Ever since I’ve never back talked to my grandma. I also now 13, hear voices. Once I was talking to my mom in the kitchen, then It sounded like my stepdad said my name. I asked him, he said, “no i didn’t say your name”. Now that time It creeped me out. Once my mom was coming back from the kitchen, she seen a little girl hiding behind my stepdads chair. She said, “the little girl quickly hid and put her hand on her head, trying to hide, and dissapeared into the ground”. I’ve never seen a ghost yet, and don’t plan on it either, but lately we’ve been having lots of activity. Any other responses? So since I’m 13 now almost 14, do you think I’m psychic?
I live in a apartment studio in Southern California and my family has lived here for 6 years now and I am now older and I remember hearing voices It happened in 2013 and the voice came from the wall and it said Your Daddy’s home and my dad came home at the same time as the voice said.In January of 2014 a female’s voice said was there going to be a party and no one was there and It creeper me out and one time I got strange unexplained scratches on my body and one time at 3 a.m someone kissed me on the cheek and said I love you and no one hears the voices and only I hear the voices and I think I am psychic.The area where we live there are always gunshots heard and there are gangs and maybe the voices are ghosts/spirits of someone who died where we live or a gang member?I am not really sure and soon we won’t live here anymore.
We just moved into a new house 1 month ago. 3 days ago my daughter woke up crying saying she hears voices and they were kids asking her to come play with her (she is the only child). Then tonight I stood in the hallway and heard her talking to herself and she was packing her clothes to go stay at her grandmas. I walked in and asked who she was talking to and she told me 2 boys. Then she talked to them while I was in the room. She sat there and looked up and then started giving answers. Do u think it’s imaginary or someone is actually there. Nothing weird has happened in the house except her talking and hearing voices. She says she can only hear them, she can’t see them. She is 7 years old. Im starting to freak out a little bit about it!