What If Tommy Wasn’t Imaginary? | Real Ghost Stories

0:00Today on Real Ghost Stories Online, everyone assumed Tommy was just part of a four-year-old's imagination. So what happened when someone else saw the same little boy? This is Real Ghost Stories Online. It is, and thank you so much for listening. Share those stories with us. If you have one, just let us know about it. You can leave us a voice mail at 855-855-34802. You can always write it down at RealGhost Stories Online.com and wherever you are listening. If you would just hit subscribe, we would love that so much. Harper is with me today. Hi, friends. Hello, hello, how are you today? I'm good. I didn't ask you if I should mention this, but I'm going to mention this anyway. So Harper is back in school and you have quite a busy school schedule, which I have to say. I love that so much about you because a lot of people who are 14 years old don't really

1:04give any shifts about school. And you really do. So you've got a lot going on in this school year, so you won't be on as many episodes. Yeah, sadly, but I will still be on it. I will still make a point to be on the show. That's what I want. And so if you can just even once a month reach out and be like, hey, Carol would love to record. Can we do that? That would be awesome. But Harper and I were talking about it a little earlier. And I said, what I don't want to go once a month, too, is catching up. Because when we record episodes, we usually spend about half an hour to an hour talking before we ever hit record. So that I don't have more time talking than we do record, I think. So that I do not want that to go away. That is not optional for you. The show is optional when you can fit it in. How about that? Yes. So it won't be a regular scheduled recording, but maybe like once a month.

2:05You can jump. Yeah. Yeah, depending on. Yeah, definitely. Because I know last year, especially towards the end of the school year, it just got to be a lot keeping up with school and you don't take the easy classes. Yeah. You challenge yourself. I do. I really do. Kind of a bad habit of mine. So if anybody is like a month from now, I'm going to have I really heard Harper. I hope she's okay. She's great. I'm busy, guys. That's the thing. She's got a life outside of ghosts. Yeah. So I'm really happy about that in that. But as long as we can continue our own chats once a week or two, I would definitely hate that very much. Yeah, definitely. Well, let's talk about an imaginary friend. So this story goes, my name is Adrian. I'm in Utah now, but this happened when we were living in Texas. I was about 12 years old. My little sister was four at the time.

3:06And for close to a year, she had what everybody assumed was an imaginary friend. At first, there was nothing strange about it. She was four, so nobody questioned it. She would sit on the floor with her toys and talk to him. Tell us when he liked and didn't like, sometimes she'd get mad if one of us sat where Tommy was supposedly sitting. I thought it was funny more than anything. I was her older brother. I gave her a hard time about it. Tommy apparently had brown hair, where striped shirts a lot and was almost six. I remember that because my sister always said it like it, like being almost six was very important. The only thing I noticed pretty early was that Tommy seemed to stay in one part of the house. We lived in an older two-story house, and there was a small landing outside the bedrooms at the top of the stairs. It wasn't really big enough to be useful for anything. There was a little table against the wall and a window at the end of the hallway. My sister would sit there all the time.

4:07She would bring dolls, coloring books, little plastic animals, whatever she was playing with. She would set everything up on that landing. If my mom asked why she didn't play in her bedroom, when she had more room, she would say, Tommy didn't want to play there. There was also a door on that landing that led to a narrow set of stairs going up to the attic. We almost never used that except for storage, and my sister wasn't allowed up there by herself. One afternoon, I found her sitting in front of that attic door talking quietly, and I asked her what she was doing, and she said she was talking to Tommy. Then she told me he wasn't allowed to go upstairs, and I asked why, and she shrugged and said his mom gets mad. I remember thinking that was creepy, but I was 12, and probably looking for a reason to scare myself. Over the next few months, she started saying other things about Tommy that seemed a little weird. Apparently, he didn't like loud noises. He didn't like when our dad slammed doors.

5:08He didn't like thunderstorms. Once she said Tommy was afraid to go outside because he got lost there before, and when my mom asked what she meant, my sister said he went outside and couldn't find his house. My mom didn't make a big deal out of it. I don't think any of us did at the time. The first thing that really bothered me happened late one night. My room was across the hall for my sisters. I'd gotten up to use the bathroom, and as I came back down the hallway, I could hear whispering coming from a room. First, I thought she was awake and playing, so I stopped outside her door and I listened, and I swear I could hear my sister's voice, but I could also hear another voice in a sounded like a kid. Although I couldn't make out any words, it was just a low whispering and then my sister would whisper something back. I opened the door and I told her to go to sleep, but she was already asleep. She was lying on her side with the blankets pulled up, and I remember standing there for a few seconds, waiting for her to move, because I was sure she had been awake.

6:12She didn't move at all and the room was completely quiet. I shut the door, went back to bed. I didn't tell anybody about it the next morning, mostly because I knew exactly what my parents would say. I had been half asleep, maybe I heard the TV downstairs, something like that. I probably told myself the same thing. A few weeks later, my aunt came to stay for the weekend and I brought my cousin who was six. The adults decided the two younger kids could sleep in my sister's room together. They were excited about that because they didn't see each other very often. Nothing happened that night as far as I knew, and the next morning we were all sitting around having breakfast when my cousin looked at my sister and asked, where does the boy sleep? My aunt asked, what boy? And my cousin said the little boy who had been in their room during the night. Everybody got very quiet. My mom asked what he looked like and she said he had brown hair and was wearing a striped shirt.

7:13I remember looking straight at my sister and she wasn't scared or surprised at all. She just said that was Tommy. My cousin said she had woke it up during the night and seen him standing near the bedroom door. She figured he must be, she figured he must sleep somewhere in the house too, which was why she was asking where his bed was. My aunt immediately assumed my sister had told her about Tommy before they went to sleep. As far as any of us knew, she hadn't. I asked my cousin about it later when it was just the two of us. I asked if my sister had talked about Tommy the night before and she said no. She just kept saying that she woke up and there was a boy standing by the door. That was when I started taking the whole thing more seriously. After that, I paid attention whenever my sister talked about Tommy. She would still play with him on the landing and every now and then I would hear her laughing when nobody else was upstairs. Few times I caught myself checking the hallway because I thought I heard another kid running around. I never actually saw Tommy.

8:13The closest I came was one afternoon when I was coming up the stairs and I saw what looked like someone move across the landing toward my sister's room. I only caught it for a second and I assumed it was her. When I got upstairs, her room was empty. She was downstairs with my mom. I didn't tell anybody about that either. By that point, I think I was afraid if I started talking about the things I was hearing and seeing, it would make all of it feel a lot more real. Only my dad got a new job and we had to move. We were moving about an hour away and everybody was mostly excited about it but my sister wasn't. During the last week, she got really upset about leaving. We all assumed it was because she liked the house and didn't understand why we had to move. She lived there for most of her life so it made sense. The morning we were leaving, almost everything had been packed into the moving truck. My dad was doing one last walk through. I was upstairs checking my room for anything I might have forgotten.

9:15My sister was on the landing. She didn't have any toys or coloring books whether she was just sitting there looking toward the attic door and I asked her what she was doing and she said she was saying goodbye to Tommy. I told her he could probably come visit us at the new house and she said no, he can't come, he has to stay here and I asked why. And she looked at me like the answer should be obvious because this is where he lives. That was the last thing I ever heard her say about Tommy. Once we moved, she stopped talking about him. My parents didn't bring him up much after that and neither did I. Life just moved on. Years later, I did ask her if she remembered him and she did. Not everything which isn't surprising considering how young she was but she remembered him. She remembered sitting on the landing playing with him and she remembered that he had brown hair and wore striped shirts. She even remembered that he didn't like going outside. What she didn't remember were some of the stranger things she used to tell us like his

10:17mother getting mad if he went upstairs or saying that he had gotten lost and couldn't find his house. I asked her if she thought Tommy had been an imaginary friend and she said I guess that's possible but that wasn't how she remembered him. In her memory, Tommy was another kid and she remembers talking to him and playing with him the same way she remembers playing with other kids. My parents still think he probably was imaginary. My mom admits that the thing with my cousin was strange but she thinks my sister must have mentioned Tommy to her at some point and nobody remembers that. I have a harder time explaining the whispering I heard in my sister's room that night or the person I saw move across the landing when she was downstairs. Thanks for reading this. I enjoy listening to the podcast and hearing everyone's stories. Imaginary or ghost? What do you think? Ghost. I kind of am going ghost too.

11:18Yeah. I'm sorry. There's just too many things outside of like her own imagination. Well, that could explain by her own imagination. Like the whispering, the figure, the cousin. It has to be a ghost. In my opinion, at least. I think the whispering thing that he heard is really strange. Yes. And then you could go in and go, well, she sounded asleep but maybe she was talking to her sleep. Maybe she was. You could explain it any number of ways. But I do think it's weird that her cousin would randomly go. Where does the boy sleep? Yeah. Like, because I think a little kid, you know, maybe that's not so weird to them, but it's like there's a, there was a boy in the middle of the night. Where was he sleeping? Like where did he come from? Yeah. Like, does he have a bed? Like what's going on with this kid? I find that to be really strange. Yes. Very.

12:19And I think the way she remembers Sim is interesting that she remembers Sim is somebody she played with. Yeah. I find that really interesting too. Because typically when we get these stories, you're just like, oh, and they were my imaginary friend or oh, like someone no one else could see. Not just like another kid. That was a good imaginary friend story. I was. It was a very good imaginary friend story. Or we don't get many like that. I should rephrase that. That was a great ghost kid story. Ghost kid story. Because I don't think it was an imaginary friend story after all. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. Well, let's go to this phone call. My name is Samantha and I have a ghost story for you. I was going to school in Long Beach, California, Long Beach, state. And I must have been about in 1920 and I had my own little apartment. And one night I was eating popcorn as I often did watching movies in the living room.

13:20And I was eating popcorn out of a white ceramic bowl, little white ceramic bowl. I only had a few of them at the time. Anyways, I left this bowl popcorn out after I finished eating it. These are on the couch or on the little TV. Trace the couch. And I went to bed. I woke up the next day in the morning and went to go get the bowl to make cereal or something to eat for class. And because the other one was 30, like I said, I only had a couple of bowls being a college kid. Anyways, I couldn't find this bowl and it wasn't on the couch. It wasn't on the TV stand. I tore the house apart because I knew I had left it there. I looked in my bedroom. I looked in the kitchen. I looked in a living room where I had left it and it was a very tiny place. There wasn't many places that I could have left it. I think I even checked outside and it wasn't there. Anyways, I finally gave up and went into my room to grab my jacket and my things for school.

14:23And I walked back out into the living room and the low and behold that white ceramic bowl was right in the middle of the living room space down and it absolutely freaked me out. I didn't get an evil feeling from it, but it really, really creeps me out. I'll never forget that. Anyways, I have several other paranormal stories that I will check in and share with you later. Alright, thanks for your show. Thank you so much and hope you have a good day. You know, a story like that is always like... Is something just messing with you because it can? I mean... Because like it's just a bowl. Is it like home my beer? This isn't gonna be funny. Like, look, people like my dad do exist. And I'm assuming people like my dad have also turned into ghosts. So... Oh my god, your dad would do something. What would it assume? But the fact that you know, it's one little bowl and she should be able to find the dang bowl.

15:29And she can't find the bowl. And then comes out and there's the bowl. Like, what was that all about? You don't know. But whatever it was, I'm sure. Whatever it was doing it had a great time. Like, this is so fun. This is a new party trick we have. Hide the cereal bowl. And I also get beat up. Bro college kid and not having like, man, I hardly had anything like a chair to sit in. You know, everything we got was free. It was just not having anything. And you know, it's like I want to have bowl of cereal. And I'm not going to watch that one. I just went the one I had last night. That is just strange. Yeah. I'm going to guess she eventually did watch the other one. So hopefully she had her cereal before she went to school. Yeah. Let's do one more quick call. Amanda from off to date again. I am calling because I just left my office and I had to be weird.

16:30It's like, happened today at my desk. Where is it? I am the only person. I am in a tiny little pew by myself. Nobody behind me. Nobody. Nobody comes back to where I am. Actually this morning I had felt like some, there was some things standing behind me. There was nobody there. Like I saw a shadow move. It moved in front of me like somebody was walking behind me. And it's just for you now. And then right before the incident about the cell you. It felt like something. I'm not scratching hard enough to leave marks. But like if I pat stretches and grabs on you and they're just kind of stretching their paws and getting little dicks real quick. That's what that felt like. And then saying that really free to me out. All of their free to me out. But the thing that extra free to me out was I'm listening to the podcast and it was

17:32actually kind of creep me out. I don't remember what episode it was now because of the incident. But I'm sitting there and all of a sudden the back of my shirt just pulls on on the collar. And it pulled so hard it jerked my head back. And Gary's shit out of me to be going on a scientific language, but it's here to shoot out on me. There was nobody there. I literally jumped in my chair and gas. And there was nobody there. I looked around. Nothing. I was single person. Nobody walking away. Nobody talking around to me. Nothing. I don't know what that was. I knew really, really free to me out. Ever since I was a child step from my mom and started listening to the podcast and called in, I've noticed a spiked in the activity again. I don't mind it. Normally I can deal with feeling like somebody's watching me that fine. But today it just felt like all they want. At one point it felt like somebody was peering over my shoulder and I looked in.

18:36I don't know if it's because I blanked super fast or if I don't know. It just seems like something pulled away really quickly. But there's nobody there. Again, I work where I am in my office. I'm there. The only person there. But I will call back with more stories. Have a good day. Thanks, Sky. See, I always find that fascinating when she has paranormal experiences yet listens to paranormal podcasts. I don't know if I could. Could you? Yeah, I don't know either. No, probably not. I'd be like, probably not. Especially because she kind of implied that listening is kind of ramped up activity. And if that's a case, I'd be like, I, listening. I am going to. But then do you want to listen to a true crime podcast? Is that going to ramp up the true crime around you? I don't know. I don't know. But if what, I'm sorry, what was her name again?

19:39Did she tell us her name? I think she did it at the very beginning. Let me see Amanda Amanda Amanda Amanda Amanda, if your ghosts start listening, give Amanda a break. Please, she needs one. Like leave her alone so she can work. Give her just a little bit of a break. That's just too much to ask for. And then ramp up again, because we do need stories. We do need stories. And we want you to listen. We do. We do. We'll freak out and be like, I can't listen because something might happen. Exactly. And I don't think it has anything to do with us or listening to a paranormal podcast. Okay, but maybe it does. Maybe she does work in a haunted place. Maybe. There's that. I don't know, but that would freak me out. If I'm just trying to work and I feel submitting something, grab my collar or my shirt. No, that's a pretty distinct feeling.

20:40Yeah. That shouldn't happen. I would just wear a call. Wait, you can't really wear a collar at this shirt. I'm just like a tube top, but those are just uncomfortable. Tube tops aren't good in the workplace. They really aren't that too. Yeah, that too probably doesn't meet the dress code at all for that matter. Maybe if you have a jacket over it, that would be better. It wasn't to me. That would be better. Yeah. I can't wait till you get your first professional job and you should wear a tube top. I'm not going to show up on the tube top. It was just the only shirt I could think of. I don't even know any tube tops. Dang it. By the time you get your first professional job, I will send you one so you can wear it on your first day of work. No. Then I'm going to come on here and be like, so Carol got me fired. My first day I showed up in a tube top I got called in. That doesn't work.

21:42Also, are you calling telling ghost stories and reacting to ghost stories unprofessional Carol? No. It's like that's what I do for a living. Okay. I'm sitting here in a tube top right now. Don't believe that. Well, if you have a real ghost story, we'd love to hear it. Call it in 855-855-34802. Write it down at realgoestoriesonline.com. If you want to be a premium subscriber, you can do that. Get the advanced episodes access to the archive. No commercials. Sign up, travel podcasts, or patreon.com, social ghost stories. For all of us here at RealGhost Stories Online, thanks for listening.