To ask you for a very non-woo explanation?

[Creaci]

We've recently moved into a new house and my DD2 has started randomly screaming and running to find me. All she will say is 'afraid! Shut door!'. She looks terrified and won't settle until I shut the door to whatever room we are in. Even then she wants to be carried around and will keep staring at the door. I've had a good old look through the house and I can't figure out what on Earth is going on. For the record I am very much not a woo person but this has freaked me right out!

You forgot to tell us her age

But she sounds young, so it'll be the new environment no doubt

What age?

She saw something through a door and misinterpreted it and now is worried about seeing it again.

She had a nightmare and can't separate it from reality.

She has separation anxiety.

Could be many things. Definitely not supernatural.

I'd say something scared her and now open doors remind her of that.

Presumably she's about 2? It's probably just being in a new place, or the sound of the pipes.

My dd has incredible hearing and always could hear things I can't - all children with normal for their age hearing can hear higher pitched sounds than normal for their age adult hearing, and DD's was so acute that she described sounds to me which sounded like intermittent tinnitus when she was about 8, and we ended up with an ENT appointment, the outcome of which was that she has unusually accute hearing and is hearing sounds from electronic equipment which I can't hear.

it says dd 2 so guessing shes 2!

DD2 often means the person's second daughter

When same DD was nearly 3 she could talk the hind leg off a donkey was very verbal. She told me detailed stories about what each individual tree in our garden and the surrounding small area thought especially about children, how they felt - sad, lonely, happy etc, and had told her. She kept their "personalities" distinct for several months and talked about them a lot, then forgot about them at some point.

This wasn't woo, it was her being a fruit loop having a vivid imagination and not yet totally understanding the boundary between imagination and reality.

DD2 pretty much always means second born, not age 2...

Which door is it? Is it for her bedroom / the front door etc?
Perhaps she saw a trick or treater on the street through the door, poor little thing.
I was terrified around halloween when I was a kid.

I get really antsy about open doors and don’t like it. As a child it was more a fear response, now it’s more a ‘I just don’t like it’.

No explanation, but I don’t think it’s woo, I just think I’m a bit of a wimp!

See also: having my back to the majority of a room, curtains open in the dark, going up the stairs (but not down), and checking the front door is locked.

When I was 3 we moved house, I had a dream just after the move where I was convinced was real about hands coming out of the loft trying to get me, I could hear clanking chains and stuff. It scared me for years, in fact I was probably about 13 or 14 before I realised it was dream, my mum told me many times it was but it was so real I just wouldn't believe them, I was convinced I was right and they were wrong and there was a murderous clan living in our loft! Even as an adult I find it hard to go into the loft alone in my parents house although do now understand it's completely irrational so obviously do.

Maybe it's something as simple as that?

Sorry I don't have any helpful non-woo suggestions but I'd love to hear more about your dc @blueskiesandforests, talking to trees sounds adorable!

I've seen enough horror movies to know that she is simply the first family member to whom the spirit/ghost/murderous demon is revealing itself. This is the bit where I shout 'just bloody move out, believe your child for goodness sake people, all of the warning signs are there.'

HTH

DD is just gone 2 years old. It's happening in the living room and her bedroom. It could be pipe noises but DH has been doing very noisy DIY and that hasn't bothered her one bit. It's the running to me like she's being chased that's doing my head in. She's my youngest and none of the others have ever done anything like it.

Scared of spiders? The fuckers seem to be everywhere...

She knows hes doing the DIY and thats noisy though Creaci - 2 year olds don't link random thumps and rumbles and clangs which pipes make apparently randomly and out of their sight to the source - they don't even know there are pipes in the walls or under the floor let alone that they bump, creak, rumble and clang.

Also shadows, windows that rattle in the wind. Everything about a new to you older house is unfamiliar and potentially frightening to an imaginative 2 year old.

Whipsmart she is adorable, but she's as tall as me now and no longer chatting to trees though she's still a fruit loop who could talk the hind legs off a donkey

I still have that reaction to the upstairs bathroom but I think that might have something to do with what the kids tend to leave in there.

A few weeks ago my DGS 2.5 was sleeping over at mine. I'd taken him up to bed in the spare room and was reading to him when he suddenly shot up, looked over to the window and said "who's in this room nanna?" I said there was only him and me. He looked again at the window and said "no there's someone in this room". Then he looked at the window as if he was listening to someone, giggled, then pointed and said "oh it's a ghost nanna". Then he looked at whatever it was he was seeing, pointed at his toys and said "they're my animals". I said again that there was no one else in the room. He got quite cross and shouted "yes yes nanna. It's a ghost".

It's not the first time he's asked me "who's that nanna" and pointed at something I couldn't see in that bedroom

Not strictly non woo sorry. When Dd1 was about 3 she started having what we thought were night terrors in the wee room in our house. However as time went on and she was terrified even during the day she eventually told us that the man was bad and sat on her bed. He was so bad he scared "old daddy" away. (Old daddy is her name for late FIL because dh looks so like his dad) and he's (FIL) often around the house, especially when there's a crisis. We smudged the room and forcefully invited him to move on. Dd1 never slept in there again but after that she played there happily again and dd2 sleeps there now when she's not in our bed. "Old Daddy" also returns in times of need.
I understand not everyone believes in woo but this was our experience

My DD is going through a similar phase as yours except we haven't recently moved. She'll run to us screaming 'ghost ghost' and will not go back into that room. At one point she was terrified of the bath and kept staring at the top right corner saying ghost!

I'm hoping it's just reflections and shadows she's seeing!

What exactly is smudging? I'd be well and truly running for the hills if she was saying she saw a man! Some of you have way more nerve than me!