The way we exist has a mysterious side that our conscious mind find it difficult to understand. We’re also uncertain about how children can remember their supposed ’’past memories’’ and “previous lives,” if that’s even a real thing. However, the tales we shared below gave us chills and definitely raised many questions in our thoughts.
Story 1
My three-year-old leaned into my knee as I was sitting, reading. “What’s wrong, sweetie?” I asked as she heaved a deep and weary sigh. “I’m tired of this planet; I want to go back to the star where I came from.” Taking a very deep breath and struggling to keep my voice calm, I said something like, “I know. It’s hard, but this is where we are now.”
Story 2
I was watching an old video of a jazz drummer playing a solo. I had no idea who it was, but he was really good. My 3-year-old daughter, was looking over my shoulder for a minute before she turned around and said, “I used to play the drums like that when I was a man.”
Story 3
I adopted a 10-year-old baby from a relatively little-talked-about country. When he was about four, he told me he remembered details of a famine. He said he would go hungry to feed his siblings (though he didn’t have any at the time), and his mother would cry as she picked at dirt to get food.
At first, it sounded like a strange dream, but we did some research, and it lined up with a famine that happened in his birth country.
Story 4
I used to tell my dad all about conversations I had with my grandfather, who had d:ied exactly a year before I was conceived. He said I used to tell him things my grandfather told me that were totally true but that I’d have no way of knowing. One day he asked me where I learned this, and I told him I hung out with my grandfather before I was born.
Story 5
We used to joke that our firstborn looked just like my grandmother, who p:assed away almost exactly a year before she was born. But then again, all babies look like my grandmother with no teeth and big puffy cheeks, so we didn’t think much of it.
One night, when she was less than a year old (I don’t remember more specifically than that), she was really upset and would not calm down no matter what I did. At one point, I said out loud, “Wow, you really do look like Grandma Hayden.” She immediately stopped crying and slowly turned her head to look at me with this look of recognition on her face.
That was the biggest chill I ever got in my life right there.
Story 6
My neighbor’s daughter, at around 3 or 4, said to her father, “Do you remember when I was a boy and we rode horses?”
Story 7
When I was about 4, I would tell my family stories about “the olden days” when we had to start the woodstove in the school room and several other details. Little House on the Prairie wasn’t even a show yet, and several of my stories were never seen in that series either
Story 8
When my son was four, we had driven past a cemetery. He asked me if I remembered when he d:ied and was bu:ried. I said no and asked him what he meant by that. What he said next made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. He said he had d:ied, was buried in a cemetery, and that’s when he started growing in my belly.
He doesn’t remember saying this now.
Story 9
My family just moved into our new house that was vacant for a while. On our first night, we had the dinner table set up, and while eating, my wife and I caught our 6-year-old staring off at the wall. We asked him what he was looking at, and he said, “I see the family picture on the wall of the people who are not here anymore…” We never saw who lived here before us. It was a bit odd!
Story 10
My niece has always loved me, and we have a close bond. One time, when she was really young, we were hanging out, chatting, and watching cartoons. She turned to me and said, “I really like that you’re a girl now and not a boy anymore. That means we can hang out because I don’t like boys.”
So I was kind of like, “What the heck?” and tried to get her to elaborate, but that was the end of it, and she never said anything like that again. Who knows if it was just the ramblings of a toddler or something more.
Story 11
I once told my mother, “I used to be your dad” when I was a toddler. And if that’s not weird enough, he died about 9 months before I was born.
Story 12
My toddler started calling us by Greek names for mom, dad, grandmother, grandfather, brother, sister, despite never being exposed to the language or anyone from there. We kept trying to correct her, but she insisted. We didn’t realize it was Greek until weeks later when I was telling a Greek client.
Story 13
My son was little (about 4 years old), and he was playing with his toys and talking. I asked him, “Who are you playing with?” He replied with my sister’s name. My sister d:ied when I was young.
Story 14
My three-year-old told me a story about playing with her kids or grandkids while sitting in an old rocking chair on a dirt floor… there’s no way she could have known that there used to be dirt floors.