To ask you what the was the most unsettling thing your toddler said

[averagetoruser]

Mine said 'mummy, there are men under the bed, watching you' without blinking during a powercut. Pretty much wins the unsettling toddler competition, at least by my standards

Mummy ...why is that lady sad ? <points directly at empty table in v quiet cafe with no one even near us >

DD2 when she was about 2/3 years old 😳

Not my toddler, but the daughter of a friend’s friend, who, visiting their small town from overseas, asked who ‘all the funny people who don’t talk, walking behind that old man’ were — the old man in question was the retired local undertaker.

And no, I don’t believe for a second that this child actually had a vision of the dead walking behind the undertaker, but the mutual friend who was there, and who knew his identity, was thoroughly chilled by it.

My toddler’s most chilling moments have always been when he climbed out of bed and came into my bedroom at 3 am - terrifying to be woken in the dark by a face an inch from yours! Especially when the face gives a de,onic chuckle and announces ‘Mummy play!!!’

Had a whole (quite adult) conversation with me about how he had had a flying accident where he had crashed into another airplane but managed to land but then died in the ambulance. He said it was in America - I wasn't aware he knew what or where America is. He gave me the name of the friend he was with (nickname type of name) and told me his name, which was a surname. Incidentally the friend's name was what he later called his imaginary friend. I was so freaked out I stopped the conversation and never asked him about it again. He can't remember anything about it now.

I'm probably one of the most cynical people about and definitely not woo at all.

I had an appointment back in my home village where I grew up for 24 years.

There was no parking so we parked on a side street. As I got DD2 out of the car she waved at an empty window across the road and said 'the doctor is waving at me'

The building in question used to be a dr surgery, but was turned into flat about 15 years ago.

Obviously DD would never of know that.

Omg 😦

DD when she was 2/3 years old:
Look! There he goes (finger following across the ceiling) ... the man in the wall.

and

The man in the wall wears a blue top. He's up there ...
(points to the empty corner she's always been fascinated with since being tiny)

One night in her room:
He's in here Mummy. Up there. Looking down. His face is all ... (she does an awful angry face with bared teeth)

I swear this is true. We moved shortly afterwards. We were going anyway but after the angry face one which really freaked me out i was very glad! She never said anything like it again. She's 9 now.

Omg, I’m going to have nightmares tonight reading these.

Heard my daughter chatting away in her bedroom in the middle of the night when she was about 3. I asked "Are you talking to your imaginary friend?" She replied "Yes .... he's dead."

When we were kids, my brother was talking to himself in the corner of the room. My mum asked what he was doing and he said he was talking to Grandma and he was on her knee. He was too young to have met her, but he was sitting in the chair she always sat in. It was creepy as hell. He doesn't remember it at all now though, and it never happened again.

DS2, who a friend always said he’s been here before hasn’t he? When he was very little we were in a gift shop on holiday, the assistant was chatting to him and asked him his name, he said a different name, looked confused and then said, but they meaning mum dad & DS1 call me (his name). The name told the assistant was DH late Dads name, he died over a decade before DS2 arrived. DH late dad was only, referred to as Grandad in our home. He is amazingly like him in character too.

I know what you're thinking mummy. You're thinking I'm going to cut you up way pair of scissors (age 4, and I was most definitely not thinking that. Sadly, I have now thought it every time she got cross for the subsequent 14 years).

*with a, not way

Mummy I love you so much I’m going to hold your hand and not let it go, even when you’re dead.

DC woke up crying at 3am and then whispered into my ear, "Mummy, I don't like the men behind you".
I slept very badly for the rest of the night.

"Mummy - I'm going to eat your EYES"

When I was little, I apparently followed my mum around like an anxious shadow all morning once, clearly really unsettled by something, and when she asked me what was wrong and why I was so worried about letting her out of my sight, I said "Because the horrible lady, the one who looks like she's all rotten, got into my room last night and I don't want her to carry me off to the dead tree that she lives inside."

Upon further questioning I explained that I'd known for ages that there was a rotting woman with peeling yellowy skin who lived in the trunk of the dead tree (which was a massive dead elm in the field behind our garden) because I'd seen her a few times when I looked out of the window in the night, and I was frightened of her but hadn't said anything because up until now, I didn't think she could get in.

There’s a man talking in my bedroom.

Ds said this to me in the middle of the night, I launched him into the middle of our bed and on further investigation turned out it was just a toy robot with a broken battery!

I've told this before - Christmas eve, dusk, just before DS turned two. We'd been to visit friends and got fed up of crawling along the motorway, so we turned off to take the back roads home. DS was fast asleep in the back of the car and DH said we should stop to let the dogs out for a wee. We saw a sign for a Roman amphitheatre that we knew was just in a field, so we stopped there - no discussion, just 'Look, that'll do'. I was going to stay in the car, but DS woke up so I took him out to catch up with DH and the dogs. He went toddling round the inside of the amphitheatre ahead of me, in and out of the chambers in the wall/bank, and then suddenly stopped dead in his tracks and ran back to me half-crying, and said 'Soldiers! Soldiers in there!'

Dd2 used to have loads of 'past life' snippets. She once drew a circle on a piece of paper and said 'that's the pond where I drowned'. Once she talked about 'the night when all the trees blew down and we couldn't find the baby'.

The first time I was alone with DD1 and newborn DD2, DD1 said 'who's that?', 'who?' I asked, 'whoever just came in and kissed the baby'. There was no-one else in the house ....

"I used to be Jane's mummy and we lived beside a hill, then I zoomed down into being your baby."

"I love your head. I'd like to cut it off so I can look at it forever."

My youngest son said "when you die I'll hold your hand so that when you go to heaven you can take me with you". Sort of sweet.

“they used to milk me when I was a horse”

My dd once refused to go into some woods on a walk because ‘Scary Mary lives there. She wears a white nightie and pinches you if you’re naughty.’

On investigation it turned out that some of the nursery staff had very reprehensibly been watching ‘Scary Mary Poppins’ on their phones at work- a Mary Poppins trailer done in the style of a horror film.

DS1 when aged about 3 casually referred to when he and his best friend lived together in Australia and had a different mummy. I tried to question more about it but he moved on and clammed up.

Our two are adopted (required for story), when our son was three we were in Ikea (the first time he had ever been there) and he saw a plushy dog and said “mummy x name bought me one of those” and she indeed had, but he hadn’t seen it since he was about 13 months old and no one had mentioned it during that time.