Something wicked this way comes: Scary tales 5

The things children see.

I have often heard it said that children are more likely to see ghosts than adults are. Possibly it is because children are so innocent, or perhaps it is because children are not so jaded that they no longer believe in the unbelievable, or maybe they just work on a different level than adults; but any way you look at it you get more ghost stories out of children than adults. True a sighting from a child is a little less reliable because they are prone to over exaggeration,  but I find adults are just as bad about misdiagnosing what goes bump in the night.

The husbeast is originally from New Orleans. For anyone who is even slightly sensitive to spirits, New Orleans is a hot bed of activity. I can only imagine how much worse it would be for a child. He learned very early the virtue of burning white candles outside your bedroom door at night, and that a circle of stuffed animals can protect you if you believe in them hard enough.

One of his most vivid ghost experiences was a mischievous little spirit that just wanted to be his friend. The spirit tried very hard to make him feel comfortable, appearing to him in several forms that should have been friendly. Once it appeared to him as Tony the Tiger, who was his favorite cereal cartoon character. The husbeast was freaked out by this. The spirit also appeared as a tiny little skeleton. It danced around trying to show that it was not a threat, but again this only scared the boy. It was after that night that his mother discovered him sleeping in the center of a circle of stuffed animals for protection.

Also as a child, while staying in his grandmothers house, he awoke one night to the feel of someone sitting beside him on the edge of the bed. He saw an older man in a suit sitting there watching him sleep. Later when he described the man to his grandmother she retrieved a photograph and asked if that was the man. He told her it was and she informed him that it was his grandfather. The suit he described was the one he had been buried in.

My own experiences as a young child are actually few. Most of my run ins with ghosts and spooky things did not start until I was around ten, or at least that I remember. I am sure that just because I can not recall any incidents before then does not mean that they did not happen. I had a ridiculously over active imagination as a child, and I was likely to have written off certain things as just make believe as the adults would have said. There is one incident that happened to me when I was ten, which is by far the creepiest thing that ever happened to me, but I am saving that for Halloween.

So remember next time you hear a child say that they saw something, don't be so fast to disregard what they say as flights of fancy. They just might have actually seen something that you have just convinced yourself not to believe in.