There's a reason why the most effective addition to a hallway in The Shining's Overlook Hotel was a pair of twin girls, and why The Omen featured a five-year-old rather than a teenage Damien. While children offer us the chance to see the wonders of the world again through their eyes, with endless energy and positivity at their fingertips, they can also be damn creepy.
I'm not quite sure what it is, but a young child saying "he's right behind you" is maybe 1,000 per cent scarier than an adult saying the exact same thing. It doesn't hurt that children have vast imaginations and often delve into them without warning, bringing their invented characters into discussion without warning. If that character just so happens to freak you out, well, you might convince yourself that you've got a poltergeist problem.
Natalie Morales had just this problem when she came across this horrifying story. The actress, who you may know from Girls, the Santa Clarita Diet or Parks & Recreation, shared a particularly creepy account from a three-year-old girl on Twitter this week, and freaked just about all of us out.
The photo appears to be from a magazine from a local school or nursery, in which a 3-year-old called Ruby talks about an imaginary friend. She recounts how her "imaginary mum", named 'Grateful', visits her each night with some pretty bizarre features. Some of the details have led people to think she is far more likely to be haunted than to have come up with all of this by herself, leading Natalie to caption her tweet with, "Ruby, you have a ghost. This is straight up terrifying".
Three-year-old Ruby writes:
"This is my imaginary mum, Grateful. Her yellow eyelashes mean she can see in the dark - she only comes to see me at night-time. It scares me sometimes, but I always want to come back. She has two babies in her belly. She's 14, but can never have a birthday"
In all honesty, that just seemed to get creepier and creepier as it went on. Yellow eyelashes and night-vision isn't exactly normal, but I can see that appearing in an episode of Adventure Time or something. Two babies in her belly? Who knows - she could just be pregnant with twins, which isn't so scary.
But "it scares me sometimes, but I always want to come back" doesn't exactly inspire confidence - and the idea of a 14-year-old mother who "can never have a birthday" is so strange and unsettling I don't quite know what to make of it.
The picture itself looks like any nice drawing a toddler would draw, but when you realize it's a warped version of Peter Pan who visits every night to terrify a little girl... it starts to look a lot less endearing. Check out this artist rendering of Grateful:
Here's hoping that Ruby's parents get an exorcist around the house as soon as possible, because they definitely having a boogeyman lurking around.
