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Showing posts with label Child. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Child. Show all posts

05 February 2014

23 Parents Describe Their Kids’ Creepy Imaginary Friends (That Are Probably Actually Demons)

1. He doesn’t have a face

    My son from the age of three always tells me about the “creeper man” who lives in my mom and dads bedroom. He brings it up after he visits them. I made the mistake once of asking what he looks like. My son said “Oh, he doesn’t have a face.”

2. “You’ll get used to killing”

    A parent of one of my students told us in a meeting that she was concerned because her son (7 years old) talked about an invisible ghost who would talk to him and play with him in his room. He said the ghost was called The Captain and was an old white guy with a beard. The kid would tell his mom that The Captain told him when he grows up his job will be to kill people, and The Captain would tell him who needed to be killed. The kid would cry and say he doesn’t want to kill when he grows up, but The Captain tells him he doesn’t have a choice and he’ll get used to killing after a while.

3. Little girl ghost

    When my daughter was three she had an imaginary friend named Kelly who lived in her closet. Kelly sat in a little rocking chair while she slept, played with her, etc. Typical imaginary friend shit. Anyway, fast forward two years later, the wife and I are watching the new Amityville (the one with Ryan Renolds) and our daughter walks out right when dead girl goes all black eyed. Far from being disturbed she said “That looks like Kelly.” “Kelly who?” we say “You know the dead girl that lived in my closet.”

4. Bad rabbit

    My cousin, when she was 5, and I was 17, had a stuffed rabbit that she talked to and carried everywhere. One day she was asleep on the couch while I was watching her, and she woke up and started yelling at her rabbit for no reason. One minute she was knocked out, the next, she’s awake, glaring at her rabbit, yelling, “No! You can’t do that! That’s bad! Don’t do it!” repeatedly. I asked her what was wrong, tried to get her to stop, but she wouldn’t listen. I finally just took the rabbit up to her room, and when I came back down she was asleep on the couch again. Fuck whatever that rabbit was planning on doing.

5. Roger won’t be around anymore…

    My little brother’s imaginary friend, Roger, lived under our coffee table. Roger had a wife and 9 kids. Roger and his family lived peacefully alongside us for three years. One day, my little brother announced that Roger wouldn’t be around anymore, since he shot and killed him and his whole family. I don’t know if he remembers any of this, but his genuine lack of remorse was very disturbing.

6. A boy in the tree

    My folks’ farm surrounds a cemetery, and my dad and my niece were walking down there. My niece (4) looks up and says “What’s that boy doing up in that tree?” There was no boy, but she insisted there was and could describe him.

7. The bunny man

    When I was 16, I babysat twins who were in the third grade at the time. They always spoke of a man in an Easter Bunny costume, and they were terrified of him. One day I was babysitting, and one twin was in the shower. His brother and I were sitting downstairs watching television when all of the sudden, he said, “you need to go check on Matt.” Seconds later, Matt yelled, “He’s in here!!! He’s in here!!!” I ran upstairs, and I had to check every room before he would calm down. I’m not sure which part of the experience freaked me out the most.

8. Poor Shaggy

    when my mom was younger she had an imaginary friend named Shaggy. When she was finished with Shaggy, she “chopped him up and put him in the fridge.”

9. “Smash Daddy’s head”

    when my brother was just learning how to talk he grabbed one of those small toy hammers and crawled onto the sofa where my dad was sleeping. He then leant in close and whispered one of his first sentences… ‘smash daddy’s head’ right into his ear.

10. Dark angels

    When my brother was little he acted like he had angels talking to him every second. One day my mom overheard him say,
    “I can’t kill him! He’s my only dad!”

11. “That’s the man”

    My daughter used to tell me about a man who came into her room every night and put the sign of the cross on her forehead. I thought it was just a dream. Then my mother-in-law sent over some family photos. My daughter looked right at the picture of my husband’s father (who has been dead for 16 years) and said ‘That’s the man who comes into my room at night!’ My husband later told me his father would always do the sign of the cross on his forehead when he was young.

12. Message from beyond

    My wife and i overheard my 2year daughter on the baby monitor wake up on Saturday morning and say “what? OK I’ll tell her” then get up and come into our bedroom and told my wife “Mary says you’re doing a good job.” Mary was her grandmother that she was extremely close too that passed away.

13. I called him Spooky guy

    As a kid, I said that my imaginary friend was a ghost. I called him Spooky Guy and said he died in the garage of the house on the hill behind ours. I even came up with his death. He was a 16 year old who got in a car crash and walked to that house to ask to use their phone (died in the 70′s). The person lived there grabbed him and sexually abused him there and killed him. He was my imaginary friend as far back as I can remember. This scared my mom so much that she tried to look up records to see if that happened and got me a therapist.

14. Icy wants me to tell you it will be tonight

    In high school one of my best friends had a little sister who was five or six years old. One day we stopped by his place, completely high, because he needed to get his Magic cards. While waiting for him to come downstairs his sister came up to me and said, “Icy told me to ask you if you know when you’re going to die.”

    I laughed nervously: morbid question, right? But I knew all about Icy, her imaginary friend. I even helped her draw a picture of him once. So I played along and said, “No, of course not! No one knows that. Hopefully when I’m very old.”

    The girl shook her head sadly and said, “No, Icy wants me to tell you it’ll be tonight.” And with that, she just walked away.

15. It is the punishment

    i was seventeen and babysitting a friend of the family’s six year old. he’d been in bed a couple of hours and i just peeked in to check on him. he wasn’t in the bed and when i opened the door wider, i saw he was standing in the corner, facing the wall. creepiest fucking thing ever. i asked him what he was doing and all he did was turn around, smile, and put his finger to his lips as if to say “shhh”. i asked him again what he was doing and all he says is, “leave us. it is the punishment.”

16. Keep kicking

    my grandfather had a camp on Lake Dering in NH when I was a kid. One day when I was 6 or so, I fell off of the dock and into the water. I couldn’t swim. While under, I distinctly remember seeing a little girl down there who told me to look up towards the sun and just keep kicking and I’d be fine. I swam to the surface just in time for my grandfather to swoop me up and pull me back on the dock.

17. Nope

    When my boy was 4, his imaginary friend would sit in the corner of the room when you switched off the lights and light the room with red glowing eyes

18. They were both dead

    Kid I used to babysit had imaginary friends. They were dead. One had no head. One was an old lady. They were both bloody. The one with no head had insides sticking out of his neck.

    I didn’t ask him questions about them because fuck that.

19. Tracy

    When my niece was about 4 she had an imaginary friend, which I don’t remember the name of. She would blame things she did on this imaginary friend but also talked about how this friend would watch scooby doo with her. One day I thought, why don’t I find out more about this friend. So I asked her to tell me about her friend. And she said, “she’s a she and she’s dead.” And I said okay, “does she have a job?” And she said, “she does what my daddy does!” Which is that her imaginary friend was a cop. Okay. So then I said, “where is your imaginary friend a police woman at?” And she said, “right next I to where my daddy is a policeman.” And I said okay. But then she said, “I met her when I was in my mummy’s belly. She touched it when I was inside.”

    A few months before my niece was born my cousin Tracy had died. She was hit by a train. She loved watching scooby doo and had a ton of memorabilia. She was also a cop. She was a cop in the town that is right next to the one my brother in law is a cop in, my nieces “daddy.” My niece’s imaginary friend was my dead cousin. There is no other way she could have known all that at the age of 4.

20. “That’s why I don’t like water now”

    When my kid was 4, we were watching a docu on the Titanic. The scene was a picture of the schematics of the boiler room and the camera panned from left to right over the plans. He pointed at the tv and said, “That’s wrong. The boilers were on the Other side. And I was right here.” And he pointed to a small space in the boiler room. “That’s where I was. And that’s why I don’t like water now.”

21. Emily
   
When my sister was probably about 6 or 7, she had an imaginary friend named Emily. She told us Emily lived in her closet, wore an old black dress, and had long dark hair and she was the same age as my sister. My sister played with Emily constantly. My parents started noticing my sister acting weird. Just sitting in the middle of her room whispering to Emily quite a bit and acting a lot more distant towards them. I remember a very specific day, my brother was walking by her room and my sister was sitting in the middle of her room….but she turned around and hissed at him. He was scared shitless. He told me it didn’t even look like my sister. My parents ran up to her room and i could hear my sister just screaming and screaming as loud as she “get out”.

    I have no idea what happened in that room but I ran to the bottom of my stairs and the screaming stopped, I saw my parents holding my sister crying their eyes out, she was sobbing as well. I’ve asked her about it today. She’s 24 now. She told me that Emily used to tell her to do horrible things to herself. She actually used to wake up on the roof and not remember how she got there. I’m not kidding. Apparently Emily absolutely hated my parents so she turned my sister against them. She hates talking about it so i never brought up that specific night. This all happened at my old house. When we moved into a different house, Emily was gone. I’m not making any of this up. My sisters little friend was a really big deal to my family and messed things up for a long time. I’m just relieved we left that house.

22. She floated above his bed at night

    When my younger brother was around 4, he had an imaginary friend named Victoria Meadowbrooke. He told us that she was the prettiest girl ever and she floated above his bed a night.

23. “The Evil is coming”

    When my older daughter was two or three, she used to have a couple of imaginary friends, Dodo and DeeDee. They were typical imaginary friends. She would talk to them and play with them, and tell me about their lives.

    Then one day, when she was about three, she was talking on her play phone when I walked into the room. She “hung up” her phone and said to me (with a completely flat voice and deadpan expression): “The Evil is coming.” 

11 September 2013

'Love hormone' oxytocin may play wider role in social interaction than previously thought

"People with autism-spectrum disorders may not experience the normal reward the rest of us all get from being with our friends," said Robert Malenka, MD, PhD, the study's senior author. "For them, social interactions can be downright painful. So we asked, what in the brain makes you enjoy hanging out with your buddies?"

Some genetic evidence suggests the awkward social interaction that is a hallmark of autism-spectrum disorders may be at least in part oxytocin-related. Certain variations in the gene that encodes the oxytocin receptor - a cell-surface protein that senses the substance's presence - are associated with increased autism risk.

Malenka, the Nancy Friend Pritzker Professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, has spent the better part of two decades studying the reward system - a network of interconnected brain regions responsible for our sensation of pleasure in response to a variety of activities such as finding or eating food when we're hungry, sleeping when we're tired, having sex or acquiring a mate, or, in a pathological twist, taking addictive drugs. The reward system has evolved to reinforce behaviors that promote our survival, he said.

For this study, Malenka and lead author Gül Dölen, MD, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar in his group with over 10 years of autism-research expertise, teamed up to untangle the complicated neurophysiological underpinnings of oxytocin's role in social interactions. They focused on biochemical events taking place in a brain region called the nucleus accumbens, known for its centrality to the reward system.

In the 1970s, biologists learned that in prairie voles, which mate for life, the nucleus accumbens is replete with oxytocin receptors. Disrupting the binding of oxytocin to these receptors impaired prairie voles' monogamous behavior. In many other species that are not monogamous by nature, such as mountain voles and common mice, the nucleus accumbens appeared to lack those receptors.

"From this observation sprang a dogma that pair bonding is a special type of social behavior tied to the presence of oxytocin receptors in the nucleus accumbens. But what's driving the more common group behaviors that all mammals engage in - cooperation, altruism or just playing around - remained mysterious, since these oxytocin receptors were supposedly absent in the nucleus accumbens of most social animals," said Dölen.

The new discovery shows that mice do indeed have oxytocin receptors at a key location in the nucleus accumbens and, importantly, that blocking oxytocin's activity there significantly diminishes these animals' appetite for socializing. Dölen, Malenka and their Stanford colleagues also identified, for the first time, the nerve tract that secretes oxytocin in the region, and they pinpointed the effects of oxytocin release on other nerve tracts projecting to this area.

Mice can squeak, but they can't talk, Malenka noted. "You can't ask a mouse, 'Hey, did hanging out with your buddies a while ago make you happier?'" So, to explore the social-interaction effects of oxytocin activity in the nucleus accumbens, the investigators used a standard measure called the conditioned place preference test.

"It's very simple," Malenka said. "You like to hang out in places where you had fun, and avoid places where you didn't. We give the mice a 'house' made of two rooms separated by a door they can walk through at any time. But first, we let them spend 24 hours in one room with their littermates, followed by 24 hours in the other room all by themselves. On the third day we put the two rooms together to make the house, give them complete freedom to go back and forth through the door and log the amount of time they spend in each room."

Mice normally prefer to spend time in the room that reminds them of the good times they enjoyed in the company of their buddies. But that preference vanished when oxytocin activity in their nucleus accumbens was blocked. Interestingly, only social activity appeared to be affected. There was no difference, for example, in the mice's general propensity to move around. And when the researchers trained the mice to prefer one room over the other by giving them cocaine (which mice love) only when they went into one room, blocking oxytocin activity didn't stop the mice from picking the cocaine den.

In an extensive series of sophisticated, highly technical experiments, Dölen, Malenka and their teammates located the oxytocin receptors in the murine nucleus accumbens. These receptors lie not on nucleus accumbens nerve cells that carry signals forward to numerous other reward-system nodes but, instead, at the tips of nerve cells forming a tract from a brain region called the dorsal Raphe, which projects to the nucleus accumbens. The dorsal Raphe secretes another important substance, serotonin, triggering changes in nucleus accumbens activity. In fact, popular antidepressants such as Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft belong to a class of drugs called serotonin-reuptake inhibitors that increase available amounts of serotonin in brain regions, including the nucleus accumbens.

As the Stanford team found, oxytocin acting at the nucleus accumbens wasn't simply squirted into general circulation, as hormones typically are, but was secreted at this spot by another nerve tract originating in the hypothalamus, a multifunction midbrain structure. Oxytocin released by this tract binds to receptors on the dorsal Raphe projections to the nucleus accumbens, in turn liberating serotonin in this key node of the brain's reward circuitry. The serotonin causes changes in the activity of yet other nerve tracts terminating at the nucleus accumbens, ultimately resulting in altered nucleus accumbens activity - and a happy feeling.

"There are at least 14 different subtypes of serotonin receptor," said Dölen. "We've identified one in particular as being important for social reward. Drugs that selectively act on this receptor aren't clinically available yet, but our study may encourage researchers to start looking at drugs that target it for the treatment of diseases such as autism, where social interactions are impaired."

Malenka and Dölen said they think their findings in mice are highly likely to generalize to humans because the brain's reward circuitry has been so carefully conserved over the course of hundreds of millions of years of evolution. This extensive cross-species similarity probably stems from pleasure's absolutely essential role in reinforcing behavior likely to boost an individual's chance of survival and procreation.

Source: http://ow.ly/oMDEV

31 October 2011

Moment huge beast tried to play pat-a-cake with a toddler

These breathtaking photographs capture the remarkable moments when a tiger bowed its head and placed a paw up to the hand of a small girl.

Photographer Dyrk Daniels noticed the 370lb Golden Bengal Tiger had taken an interest in the child, who was leaning against his glass enclosure.

As the tiger, called Taj, headed over to her, Mr Daniels got his camera ready, expecting him to snarl and bang against the glass.

Tender moment: Rather than banging against the glass, the tiger gently put its paw up to the little girl's hand

Tender moment: Rather than banging against the glass, the tiger gently put its paw up to the little girl's hand

But amazingly the tiger hung his head, stretched a paw out to her hand and rubbed his cheek against where the girl's face was.

Father-of-two Dyrk Daniels, 47, went to Cougar Mountain Zoo in Issaquah, Washington State, to photograph the Bengal tigers.

When he got to the enclosure there were several children and families in the area, so he decided to let them see the tigers first before he tried to photograph them himself.

That is when I noticed this little girl was leaning against the glass with both hands out stretched staring at the ‘big kitties’,’ he said.

Gentle giant: As the tiger headed over to the glass partition towards the little girl, photographer Dyrk Daniels thought the big cat would snarl and frighten her

Gentle giant: As the tiger headed over to the glass partition towards the little girl, photographer Dyrk Daniels thought the big cat would snarl and frighten her

Bonding: The tiger put its face right down so the little girl could look it straight in the eye

Bonding: The tiger put its face right down so the little girl could look it straight in the eye

I noticed that Taj had taken an interest in the girl and was heading towards her.

I thought for certain that the little girl would need therapy after the encounter and fear cats for the rest of her life.

‘I could not believe my eyes when Taj approached the girl, bowed his head and then placed his huge right paw exactly in front of where the little girl's left hand was.

It was incredible to watch. Taj let down his right paw, rubbed his cheek against the glass where the little girl's face was and moved off.’

Far from being scared, the little girl was so excited that she started clapping as she walked back afterwards towards her mother.

I have never seen such tenderness from such a large predator,’ Mr Daniels said.

25 October 2011

Ran over a child twice 'because it was cheaper than paying the hospital bills'

Hey, it's not like they are killing children by the million by abortive means. No, wait...

A lorry driver ran over a five-year-old boy – and then reversed over him to make sure he was dead in an apparent attempt to avoid footing hospital bills for the child.

The sickening incident happened in Luzhou, western China, when driver Ao Yong hit Xiong Maoke as he left home to walk to school.

Witness Zhang Shifen said: ‘I saw the truck move back a little and then move forward again. Xiong became wrapped up in the wheel and the truck continued forward another ten yards.’

The tragedy comes just a week after two-year-old Yue Yue was knocked down by two vehicles on a busy market street. The child was ignored by 18 passers-by before someone came to her aid. She died in hospital a few days later.

Fatal: Xiong Maoke's mother sits beside the truck that killed her five-year-old son

Fatal: Xiong Maoke's mother sits beside the truck that killed her five-year-old son. The image of the child's body has been pixelated by MailOnline

Sickening: The truck that killed Xiong as he was walked home to school in Luzhou, western China

Sickening: The truck that killed Xiong as he was walked home to school in Luzhou, western China

In this latest incident passers-by said the lorry driver jumped from his cab after hitting the boy. They claimed Yong then asked: ‘How much shall I pay?’

Police said Yong, a 35-year-old lorry driver from Luxian, argued with the boy’s family about the size of the damages for seven hours.

After the latest incident, Yong denied reversing over the boy to kill him. Last night, police and government staff insisted Xiong died on impact.

Their investigation ruled that Yong was the first person to call the police after his truck hit the boy in the village of Yunfeng, in Luzhou, Sichuan province.

They said his body was not removed immediately because angry villagers were demanding instant compensation from the driver.

In heartrending scenes, the boy's mother sat shocked next to the covered body of her five-year-old son.

A string of such horrific cases have led to soul-searching in China, where the economic boom has been blamed for fuelling materialism at the cost of compassion.

Handing over compensation if an accident victim dies is seen by many Chinese as cheaper than paying for lengthy hospital treatment. The Communist regime does not provide free healthcare for its 1.3billion citizens.

Ignored: In a similar incident the previous week, Yue Yue was left with horrific brain injuries and never recovered

Ignored: In a similar incident the previous week, Yue Yue was left with horrific brain injuries and never recovered

The fear of high medical bills is also thought to be behind a second accident in China in which toddler Yue Yue was knocked down by two vehicles on a busy market street.

The gruesome ordeal, captured by security cameras, showed the bleeding child was ignored by 18 passers-by before she was picked up by a scrap picker and given to her mother, who rushed to the street looking for her.

A week after the accident, she died in hospital.

Two drivers suspected of running over the Chinese toddler were arrested on Sunday.

The Beijing News and other outlets reported that police in the city of Foshan concluded their initial investigation and ordered the two men formally arrested, a step that almost always leads to a trial.

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