Imaginary Friends

I want to send out a belated Happy Birthday to Molly Daniels!!!!

Imaginary friends. Did you have one? Did or does your child have one? My oldest son had two actually…well three, maybe, if you count Jesus. He had a male friend named Jacob Trent, a dog named Peddy, and he often talked with Jesus. Sometimes he and Jesus would plant flowers together in the yard. When asked where his imaginary friends lived, he insisted that they lived with God.

The internet says imaginary friends are a figment of a child’s imagination and often act as guardians and/or protectors. My son’s imaginary friends had elaborate personalities and behaviors. They were always present and sometimes I would have to set an extra plate at dinner for Jacob Trent. Once I remember being told that I was about to sit on Jacob Trent, so I had to ask him to move. Mostly though, his imaginary friends weren’t a bother, except for the one time my son told me that sometimes Jacob Trent didn’t like me very much. I always wondered if that was his—being my son—way of saying he didn’t like me at times. *chuckles* I told him that Jacob Trent was welcome to go back home and not return.

One theory is that children with imaginary friends retain knowledge faster and develop better language skills than those children without them. It’s thought that this is because children with imaginary friends have more linguistic practice from conducting extra conversations with imaginary friends rather than solely with their peers. This may have some merit in my opinion. My oldest son was talking early, while I never thought my youngest was going to ever talk, but my youngest never had an imaginary friend either.

The internet also suggests that maybe imaginary friends aren’t imaginary at all, but spirits or ghosts. My son often saw people that weren’t there. Once he pointed out the window and asked if that “black man and white man” could come in and play with him. When I looked out the window and saw no one and told him that, he jabbed his pudgy finger on the window and insisted that they were “right there”. He clearly could see them, while I could not. And that was not his only occurrence seeing people that weren’t there.

He’s eleven now and has outgrown “imaginary friends” and doesn’t see people that aren’t there any more either. But, I still wonder. Were his imaginary friends just that—imaginary—or were they really ghosts or spirits or something else that were there entertaining him? I don’t know and probably will never know, but it makes me wonder.

So, what do you think? Are imaginary friends just imaginary or are they something else, something more? What have been your experiences with imaginary friends?

I hope everyone has an awesome weekend!

Gracen Miller

Ouija Boards- Game or Not?

Do you believe in the power of the Ouija board? Well, I have to say that I am a believer. Growing up, I was around the “game” on occasion. When I was little, my family had one that they swore was evil. Every time they pulled it out and tried to “play” with it, it would curse at them and use words that were never used around that home. It would tell them terrible things. They finally decided to get rid of it, but every time they threw it away, it would strangely show back up in the basement of my grandma’s house. Everyone denied getting it out of the trash and no one could explain how it arrived back in the basement.
Finally, someone decided to destroy it completely. They tried to burn it. It wouldn’t light on fire. They could have a large flame and pieces of wood burning like crazy, but the board would not catch. It actually sat in the flames for over half an hour and it hadn’t even singed. That’s when the family really started freaking out.

One of the men decided that it would take more than that to destroy it. So they took it out and used it for target practice. When they finally returned the board, it was full of holes. Once again, they placed it in the fire, and this time, it burned. Not great, slowly and not completely, but it burned enough that it was unusable. It was left in the fire pit and eventually did burn to nothing. It took a good while for that to happen, though.

My mother was strictly against the Ouija board. If she heard that we’d played it, she would throw a fit and tell us we were never to use one again. Of course, that didn’t stop me. My friend and I played with it occasionally when I would spend the night at her house. We asked it the same old questions…Who are we going to marry? At what age will we marry? What kind of job will I have when I grow up? Just ordinary questions. I don’t even remember the answers so I have no clue if it was right or not, but we had fun with it anyway.

Later, when we were teenagers, we played with the Ouija board more and asked it more in depth questions. Many of those answers were dead on. I have a tendency to believe that it depends on the spirit you contact when you use the Ouija board how accurate the response will be. I do believe that it’s possible to contact spirits by using them. I believe that you run the risk of contacting bad spirits as well as good spirits when you do use them. Ouija boards scare me a little, for that specific reason. I think it would be great to use if I knew I would reach a good spirit, but I don’t want to risk reaching one that isn’t, so for now, I’ll take my mom’s advice and stay away from them.

Have you had an experience with the Ouija board that you’d like to share? I’d love to hear them. Leave a comment and let me know what you think.