55 Real Moms Share Their Kids’ Creepiest IRL Ghost Stories

As a mom of two, I feel like I can say this honestly: There’s nothing creepier than a little kid. Give me a ghost! Give me a demon! Give me a poltergeist on its period! But a toddler saying scary shit in the middle of the night as the lights start flickering and a chill goes up your spine? It’s a haaard no for me. I mean, hi, when your toddler casually mentions the little boy who lives in the closet or points to an empty corner and whispers, “she’s back,” suddenly parenthood is less ~aww how cute~ and more “time to call a priest and fucking move.”

Now, we could get into the whole “do kids, babies, and dogs actually see ghosts” debate, but the answer is: No one knows!!! (Even though, yes, duh, they can.) Whether or not our offspring are actually interacting with the undead (they are) doesn’t matter, because ,regardless, all kids have this unnerving ability to say creepy shit with total sincerity. While most of the time we can write it off as overactive imagination, every once in a while a story hits that makes you wonder if maybe — just maybe — your kid’s been hanging out with someone (or something) you can’t see.

We asked the Betches Moms community to share the creepiest, most unexplainable things their kids have ever said, and let’s just say… these real-life, one-sentence ghost stories will have you side-eyeing every baby monitor and “imaginary friend” in your house. From past-life confessions to casual hauntings, here are the eerie AF things kids have said that’ll 100% keep you up tonight (and not because of yet another sleep regression). Spooky.

Kids’ Creepiest IRL Ghost Stories

1. Saw a picture of my late grandma and said, “That’s the lady who visits me and pats my back in bed.”
2. The kid of our home’s previous owner said, “Glad the furnace lady is your problem now.”
3. My son constantly talked about “the purple lady” and would always point to the ceiling in our kitchen.
4. “There’s a little girl standing in our bedroom,” my 4-year-old said while snuggling in bed with me.
5. “The green man comes at night when Mommy goes to sleep.”
6. My brother looked up and said, “Bye-bye, Gramps” the moment our great-grandfather died. No one knew yet.
7. My son always says he wants to play with “the dead kids in the yard at night.”
8. My daughter never met my MIL. One time she looked down the hallway and said, “My grandma’s here. Hi, Grandma!”
9. My little brother used to say his name was Michael and he died in a motorcycle crash.
10. My son cried that “the smiling lady” wouldn’t leave him alone. The previous owner of our house died in his room.
11. “The man with blue eyes is right behind you.”
12. My son used to tell me all about his two grandkids and the red car they were in. WERE in.
13. My 3-year-old told me, “Last time I was alive, I had a baby and she died very little and I cried and cried.”
14. My 4-year-old walked into a barn, said “There’s a ghost over there,” and kept walking.
15. We were looking at family photos and my kid asked, “Where’s the picture of me before I got burned?” He’s never been burned. 
16. I immediately saged the house after my kid said, “There’s a man in my room who tells me to do bad things.”
17. We drove past a retirement community and my 3-year-old said, “Wave to the red people.”
18. My daughter says there’s a man named William who’s always standing in the same corner of her room.
19. Pulled up to a ghost town in Virginia City, and my 4-year-old said, “Why is there so much blood?”
20. My son wouldn’t walk past “the man in the hallway.” There was no man.
21. My kid looked at a photo of my great-grandparents and said, “Aww, I miss old Mommy and Daddy.”
22. My daughter stopped at the stairs, stared for a minute, and said, “There’s a grandma in there.”
23. Asked my 3-year-old what she was drawing. She said, “A soul.” When I asked how she knew what souls looked like, she said, “I was one before I was a baby. Last time, I waited so long for you.”
24. My 2-year-old would point upstairs saying, “Baby’s crying.” There was no baby upstairs. When we moved down the street, he started saying, “Baby’s crying down the street.”
25. My son says he sees all the smiling, waving faces whenever we pass a cemetery.
26. My 4-year-old sat up in the middle of the night, pointed at something in my room, and said, “It’s staring at you.”
27. My toddler wouldn’t stop saying, “Leave me alone. Go away,” for half an hour at 3 a.m.
28. My 3-year-old says “the girl from the backyard” comes into his room at night.
29. My daughter says “monsters come out when Mommy’s sleeping” to rub lotion on her.
30. We were at Donner Lake, and my daughter pointed to the forest and said, “I used to live there.”
31. My son said, “I don’t like when they talk to me when I’m falling asleep.”
32. My kids ran past an empty closet, stopped, and said, “Who’s that?”
33. My son once whispered, “Don’t yell, Mommy. You’ll wake them up.” There was no one else home.
34. “That looks like the dark man who tells me to go to bed and makes me sleepy.”
35. “Mom, the little boy in my room keeps taking my toys.” (She’s an only child.)
36. My 2-year-old asked who the man in the corner was at nap time. He said he’s “not nice.”
37. My son talks about his “other parents who live in the woods.”
38. “I can’t wear my socks to bed because the shadow baby pulls them off.”
39. Every night my 5-year-old says she’s scared of the people behind her door “that come out of the dark.”
40. My daughter always says, “There’s Marcus!” while pointing at the corner of her bedroom. No clue who Marcus is.
41. “You’re my second mommy,” my kid said. “I was born to a different mommy first, then I died and was born to you.”
42. My son said there was a man on his ceiling who told him not to wake up. Then the fire alarm went off and a light fell from the hallway ceiling.
43. My 4-year-old asked, “Who’s Abby?” I said I didn’t know, and she said, “Then why is the lady in the corner singing my name?” That week, our garage door started opening and closing by itself.
44. Stayed overnight in a haunted castle, and my baby was wide awake all night, giggling into the dark.
45. Since my kid was one, she’s pointed to an empty wooded area and said “bus.” A bus crashed there 40 years ago.
46. My daughter asks if I open her bedroom door at night because it “opens by itself.”
47. “The eyes at night are watching me.”
48. My 2-year-old walked up to the tombstone of a 2-year-old from the 1800s and gave it a big hug.
49. My 3-year-old constantly talked about her brother and sister that died. I had a twin miscarriage she doesn’t know about.
50. My kid freaked out at a blank corner of the room and said, “I don’t like that face.”
51. My 2½-year-old stared across his empty room and said, “Who’s the man in the doorway?”
52. My daughter woke up crying because “a girl with cold hands was touching my hair.” Nope.
53. My kid said he didn’t want to bounce his ball because it would “wake the dead people.”
54. My dogs and baby stare at the stairs all the time. Later I found out a 3-year-old boy died upstairs decades ago.
55. “My head itches.” (It was lice.)