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Imaginary Friends

 

WARNING: This will be a lengthy read.

I'd like to start by saying I'm sort of new to YGS so if I'm not familiar with any etiquettes I apologize in advance.

Seeing as this is my first submission, I would like to give you a little bit of background information on myself so that I can try to keep all events in chronological order (which may take a while, since I've had so many.)

My name is Paige and I am a 20 year old college student, living with my boyfriend Nick. For as long as I can remember, the paranormal has always surrounded me. It was a very open topic between me and my father, and later on in life my mother began to accept it a little more as she began to experience things herself- though she still tries to avoid the subject as much as possible and chalks pretty much everything up to an over-active imagination.

I always felt as if I was a magnet to the paranormal and it wasn't until I was around 8-9 years old that my father gave me an explanation, to the best of his ability. I still remember almost word-for-word what he said because it resognated with me so much. My father said, "Alright Punk, there's something you should know. Our family is more sensitive to things then other people. It's like... They're drawn to us. It's in our blood. Promise me you'll stay away from Ouija boards, tarot cards, and anything of the sort? It'll open things you want no part in." I promised him I would and we went back to our normal, everyday lives.

So now that I've given you a little bit of insight into my life, I'll start with the very first experience I can remember.

At the age of three I lived in Pottstown with both my mother and father on the fifth floor of an apartment building. I don't remember the layout of the house very well, having been so young, but I distinctly remember that in order to get to my parents bedroom you had to go through mine, which was fairly large. There was a doorway in the back left corner leading to their bedroom and then a doorway right next to my bed, on the right, leading to the living room.

When we moved into this house, I acquired two imaginary friends, twin boys named Jimmy and Joey. My parents never thought anything of it. Here's where it starts to get a little weird.

Unlike my other imaginary friends who I "made up" so to speak, I can recall their images vividly, as if they had been actual people. They were identical, on the heavier side, african-american children with very dark eyes always dressed in the same clothing: tan pants and a white button down shirt. They quickly became my "best friends" and we played every single day. They were never mean to me and I never felt threatened in their presence, though I always thought it odd that when I asked them to come outside and play or go somewhere with me, they told me their mother needed them home for something.

Until one day we were all playing in my room, which contained a little playhouse that people normally put outside in their yard, but as I said before, my room was pretty big for being three, and we had no yard to put it in. Jimmy and Joey began convincing me that I could fly like a bird. The memory is a bit hazy with time but I remember one of them saying, "Come on just jump. I promise you, as soon as you jump we'll be flying in the sky together. We'll be like birds, just do it."

So being a toddler I began climbing onto the playhouse roof (which I could never have accomplished on my own) and faced our fifth story window. Luckily it was that exact moment that my mom decided to walk in the room and check on me, snatching me off that roof as I bent my legs to take a leap. She was bewildered as to how I had managed to get up there in the first place, but I just wailed that Jimmy and Joey had told me to do it and they should get in trouble too. My mom humored me and turned to what she thought was thin air and "sent them away to Juvie" telling them they weren't welcome in her home any longer. Little did she know, they never showed up again.

As I got older, we shared more of the little details on it and joked about them wanting me to play with them forever, but deep down I shiver a little thinking about it. Had my mother not walked in that day, I would have killed myself at three years old.

What do you guys make of it?

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Comments about this paranormal experience

The following comments are submitted by users of this site and are not official positions by yourghoststories.com. Please read our guidelines and the previous posts before posting. The author, silent_insanity, has the following expectation about your feedback: I will read the comments and participate in the discussion.

curiousityoverload (1 stories) (2 posts)
 
8 years ago (2017-06-07)
Welcome. I enjoyed your story, but it is very scary. I remember my son telling me that some kind of imaginary friend of his was angry sometimes when I wanted him to stop with something. He told me that his name was 'xavieje' referring to the minions animated movie. He also told me that he was always under my fathers chair. Sometimes I really did'nt know how to handle it
silent_insanity (1 stories) (1 posts)
 
8 years ago (2016-12-01)
Thank you every one for your input, I appreciate hearing other's thoughts on the incident. And thank you Bibliothecarius for clearing up the confusion while I was away:)
Unicron1000 (guest)
 
8 years ago (2016-11-07)
It was a good thing she checked on you. Anyway, your imaginary friends might have been trying to hurt you, but I may be wrong. Even if you don't feel threatened by them, they could still be mean.
JFS2 (1 stories) (7 posts)
+4
8 years ago (2016-11-04)
I've always thought that most imaginary friends might be ghosts playing with kids.

I also believe that something 'told' your mom to go check on you because you were in danger. Whether what it is I don't know. I do believe in guarding angels and friendly/relative spirits that help us during our lives.
Bibliothecarius (9 stories) (1091 posts)
+2
8 years ago (2016-11-04)
Greetings & welcome to YGS, Silent_Insanity.

I enjoyed reading your description of your early childhood encounter and I look forward to reading others in the future. I have been giving serious thought to these events, and --if you'll forgive my presumption-- I'm going to address the confusion which has arisen in from your description of the events.

While setting up the outdoor playhouse inside seems like a perfectly reasonable way to keep one toddler entertained, the key to comprehending the danger lies in the context, which I believe Lunahenry has illustrated. If we remove all of the parenthetical details from the 11th paragraph, we see the harrowing information: "I began climbing onto the playhouse roof" and "faced our fifth story window... I bent my legs to take a leap."

Silent_Insanity states that clambering onto the roof of the playhouse is a feat she "could never have accomplished on my own," ergo someone/something must have given her a 'boost' to the top of the structure. The implication, obviously, is that Jimmy and Joey provided that assistance. They were enticing her to commit suicide at the age of three, then actively participating in accomplishing that goal.

The most sinister part of the account, to my mind, is that these twin boys could have no guarantee that Silent_Insanity's spirit/soul/essence also would become a ghost within the apartment. Her incipient death would have occurred outside the building, but there do not seem to be coherent 'rules' for where a spirit may linger or roam in the afterlife; there are plenty of traditions, theories, philosophies, and religious teachings, but --with regard to what occurs to individual identity post-mortem-- it is indeed "that undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns."

Additionally, there's no way to measure the truthfulness of the twin boys' stated intent to "fly" with her: if they constituted a 'sentient haunting,' they may have based their belief in flying in their own experience with mortality, or they may have had far more sinister motives in deceiving a toddler to attempt flight. As Silent_Insanity does not have a clear recollection of this portion of the conversation, there's no mention of whether or not the boys had climbed onto the roof or if they were levitating as an inducement to join them. (We could speculate that they were the pawns of some other agency or intelligence, but that would be well beyond the parameters given within the narrative; after all, she was being invited to join 'them,' not to go visit someone else.)

As the boys disappeared after this incident, it seems reasonable to suggest they were banished/exorcized by her mother, even if her mother believed she was venting her terror and anger at a placebo "imaginary friend." As Ladydarke recently reminded me, intention matters more than ritual under these circumstances.

Best,
Biblio
Lunahenry (2 stories) (50 posts)
+3
8 years ago (2016-11-04)
The playhouse faced the fifth floor window. He was going to jump from the playhouse out the window. That's what I thought when I read it.
Macknorton (5 stories) (646 posts)
+2
8 years ago (2016-11-03)
Greetings Silent_Insanity (we can relate to that๐Ÿ˜†)

Thanks for sharing. Not a lengthy read at all! I was settling in for a War & Peace-type experience! Intriguing read for sure, I enjoyed it. The part that I'm not understanding is this:

How big is your Playhouse? It couldn't have been more that a meter, meter and a half or so off the ground? I'm no expert on toddlers and how far they can fall before it becomes lethal, but from raising three kids myself, they are very robust and well..."bouncy" for want of better word...
Worst-case would be a loud thump, you crying and your Mom rushing in totally freaking out, but you would have landed on your feet / legs. Toddlers skulls are very hard on the back, and their bones are "rubbery". God reading that back sounds like I've thrown my own kids around to test them out!

So I wonder if your situation was as "potentially deadly" as you are suggesting?

And you suggest that you couldn't have got up there by yourself? So did these spirit children somehow levitate you up there or was more a hand-up? Intriguing indeed... ๐Ÿ˜‰

Regards

Mack
RCRuskin (9 stories) (848 posts)
+1
8 years ago (2016-11-03)
Welcome, and stay away from Macungie at rush hour if you can.

I've spent some of my happiest days in, and around Pottstown. I'm not entirely sure where that apartment building you mention is, and it's okay, please don't share it.:)

It's just my gut feeling, and may be wrong, but it seems to me these playmates of yours may not have been so friendly as they first appeared, wanting you to jump off a roof, even if it is just the play house roof.

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