Imaginary Friends….

As I sit to write this story, we are exactly 3 days away from Halloween 2020. What a long strange ride the last 4 years since March have been.

A couple of weeks ago, I penned one of the most odd paranormal encounters I have ever had. I told the story, did what small amount of editing I do for these stories, then went and took a cool hand on the mirror picture to accompany it, and posted it.

Then a couple of days ago I reread it, and realized that I might have been a bit too wordy. It’s still a really good story, and still gives me goosebumps when I think of it, but it may not quite have the ‘scary’ impact I was going for. With Halloween so close now, I figured I tell another ghost story, just this time without some of the frilly edges I put down in my last one.

Did you have an imaginary friend when you were little? Evidently I did, though I have zero recollection of it. I think a lot of kids do. The concept shows up a lot in pop culture and seems to get used in lots of different ways. Sometimes they’re intended to be funny as in the late 80’s / early 90’s ‘gem’ Drop Dead Fred. Several times though they have been used as devices in horror movies. Think with the girls in Paranormal Activity 3 (I think). Either way, the concept can be rather creepy depending on the interactions that you have with said imaginary friend.

Several years ago, my wife and I moved our tiny family from Delaware (the chicken farm place) to Lancaster, Pennsylvania (the dairy farm place). We rented a townhome that sat squarely in the middle of a set of 5, inside a nice community. There was a huge field located just beyond our back yard area and there were several families in adjacent townhomes, so the kids had playmates almost immediately.

I was working pretty long hours at the time, often leaving at 4:30am in the morning, or getting home after midnight, depending on the shift I had. After one of my early morning shifts where I arrived home just about in time for dinner, my wife asked over our then two and a half year old daughter. She wanted said daughter to tell me about her ‘friend’. As she often did, she shrugged and didn’t say anything. As it was almost dinner time my wife waited to tell me the story until later.

Earlier in the day my wife had been upstairs and heard our daughter downstairs talking merrily. She thought at first that she was just talking randomly to herself. My wife arrived downstairs and found that her little girl was playing with blocks in her little play area. This wasn’t all that strange, but she seemed to be talking ‘to’ someone, not just to herself. After a bit she asked her who she was talking to. She responded “Connor”. When asked who Connor was, she said he was a little boy. As they were the only ones in the house, my wife had asked where Connor was. Her response was that he lived in a big house. Had it ended there, then this probably wouldn’t have been all that worrisome. Our daughter was entitled to have imaginary friends, and if they were little boys who lived in big houses, so be it.

But later, after lunch, Connor came up again. This time my daughter revealed that Connor was sad. When my wife asked why he was said, she was told it was because some mean people had killed Connor’s dad, and they wanted to kill him too. This was the cause of her worry concerning Connor. My daughter, either sensing my wife’s unease, or maybe just getting a cue from Connor, refused to talk about it further after this. After we talked about it some we decided not to get to worried about it. If the subject of Connor came up again, then we could try and address it then.

It actually took a few weeks before Connor reemerged. This time however, rather than being coaxed, our little girl just started telling Connor’s story. She had gained a lot more information. Connor had a last name, he was 8, and the people that killed his dad did so because he was going to be king. For that same reason they wanted to kill Connor. She could also describe what Connor looked like. He had on a white shirt and pants and funny shoes. Needless to say, the more she seemed to learn about him, the more unnerving Connor’s presence became. He never felt malicious, though at times he evidently told our daughter that she ‘shouldn’t talk to your mommy or daddy’. There was never an explanation for this, simply a little girl upset that we were asking her things while at the same time her ‘friend’ was telling her not to talk to us.

Then one day, Connor was just gone. Our daughter would talk about him if asked, but always with the preface that Connor wasn’t here. Sometimes she’d say he went back to live at his big house. Not to sound like a broken record, but had it ended there then while this story would be a bit spooky, it wouldn’t exactly be a slam dunk creeper. Maybe our daughter just had a really active imagination (FYI she did and still does).

Several months later, around the time my daughter was turning 3 (so in October) I got a rare weekend off. We decided to spend some time doing family stuff outdoors, and one of our favorite activities was visiting what my daughters called (and we as a family still call) grave gardens (you might know them as graveyards).

So we went to a grave garden that we hadn’t visited before. It was at an old church, a few miles out into the country from where we lived. We had wanted to go to this one for awhile, because we suspected that based on its age, we were bound to find some really old graves.

We had made it about halfway around the cemetery’s path when a family plot caught our attention. It wasn’t just that it was old, it was that the family name was the same family name that Connor had. As we looked down at a set of smaller headstones located at the foot of the parents, my wife and I both found ourselves unable to speak for a moment. There, buried in 1792, at the age of 8, was a boy named Connor. His father had passed away just 3 years before him.

There was no cause of death listed for Connor. His father had no cause of death either. But really, at that point, details wouldn’t have made the finding any easier to digest.

Over the course of the next year, our daughter completely forgot about Connor. Nowadays we tell the story, but she has no recollection of it. We actually went back about a year later just to make sure we weren’t sharing in some weird fever dream, but no, Connor and his dad were still there. A sad thing I was reminded of on that trip, and that I still remember, is that while Connor’s mom’s name appeared on the headstone next to her husband, no date of birth, or date of death had been marked. This left me to wonder whether she had moved on after having lost not just Connor, but two other children, all under the age of 10.

Well good reader, that’s my last ‘spooky’ story for this particular October. As the holidays approach, I’ll be breaking out some Thanksgiving and Christmas memories, but until that time, take care, stay safe, and keep your eyes peeled next time you visit a grave garden. You never know who you might find.