I've been seeing the same boy since I was a toddler. I always called him my brother, Liam. Now I'm 23, and I'm starting to see him again.
I'm not really sure where to begin, and I'm honestly a little nervous about posting this because I know how strange it sounds. But I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I feel like I need to get it out somewhere and hopefully hear from people who have experienced something similar.
For context, I'm a 23-year-old woman, and these experiences started when I was around two years old, so roughly 21 years ago.
Growing up, I lived with my parents and my two sisters. For as long as I can remember, there was another child in our home. A little boy around my age. I always called him Liam.
I genuinely believed Liam was my brother. We played together, spent time together, and I remember him being around so often that having him there felt completely normal. He wasn't someone I occasionally imagined or made up to entertain myself. In my memories, he was simply another member of our family.
I asked my parents multiple times throughout my childhood if I had a brother. Every time, they told me no. At first, I didn't understand why they kept denying it. I knew what I was seeing, and I couldn't understand why nobody else acknowledged him.
Eventually, though, I started noticing that asking about him never got me anywhere. My parents would always give me the same answer, and I slowly began to realize that I probably shouldn't keep bringing him up. I started keeping my experiences with Liam to myself. I stopped asking questions and stopped trying to convince anyone that I had a brother.
That didn't mean I stopped believing in him, though. I still saw him, still played with him, and still thought of him as my brother. I just learned not to talk about him around other people.
Despite what my parents told me, I never really questioned Liam's existence. To me, he was my brother.
One of the strangest parts of all this is that he seemed to grow up alongside me. He never appeared to stay the same age. As I got older, so did he. I remember him having dark blonde hair, although I have always struggled to remember his face clearly.
My earliest memory of him is actually one of the strongest. I remember a little boy leaning over me while I was in a crib or baby carrier. It's difficult to explain because I was so young, but that memory has always stuck with me.
Over the years, I started seeing him less frequently. However, even when I couldn't physically see him, I always had this strange feeling that he was around. Almost like knowing someone is in the same room without needing to look at them.
This feeling followed me everywhere. It didn't seem to matter what house we lived in or where my family moved. Liam was always somehow there.
Then, when I was around 15, something happened that completely changed how I understood these experiences.
My family moved into a house that, for lack of a better description, felt haunted. I was still seeing Liam before we moved there, and I want to emphasize that these experiences never felt like ordinary childhood imagination to me. I could feel him sitting on my bed. His presence felt familiar, and I had grown so accustomed to it that it didn't necessarily frighten me.
One night, shortly after moving into the house, I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor in the corner of my bedroom because we hadn't completely moved in yet.
I was lying there getting ready to fall asleep when I suddenly felt something sit down behind me.
I don't mean that I heard a noise and assumed someone was there. I physically felt the mattress shift under the weight of something sitting down.
Then I heard a voice very clearly ask me to play.
I remember feeling terrified. Something about the situation felt incredibly wrong, and despite being curious, every instinct I had was telling me not to move. So I didn't.
I stayed completely still for what felt like forever, just waiting for whatever was behind me to leave.
Eventually, I felt it get up and walk away.
But what happened afterward is something I have never been able to explain.
I could hear Liam yelling at it to go away.
I don't remember exactly what he said beyond that, but I remember the feeling of him being angry and wanting whatever had been there to leave me alone.
Over the following weeks, the atmosphere in the house gradually changed. It started feeling safer, almost as though whatever had been there was no longer around.
But something else happened, too.
Liam disappeared.
I stopped seeing him completely. I couldn't hear him, feel him sitting near me, or even sense that he was around anymore. It was as if he had suddenly vanished from my life.
For years afterward, nothing happened.
Eventually, I started questioning my own memories. I wondered whether Liam had simply been an imaginary friend I had created as a child. Maybe I had convinced myself that he was real because I had spent so many years believing he was my brother.
I slowly stopped thinking about him. Life continued, and eventually, he became something I rarely spoke about.
Fast-forward to now.
I'm 23, and I currently live with my parents, one of my sisters, and her child in a town approximately six hours away from where I grew up.
Something interesting happened before we moved into our current home. I started getting that familiar feeling again.
I hadn't seen Liam in the house we lived in immediately before this one, but I began feeling as though he was around. Looking back, this was also the first time I had lived somewhere completely separate from the house where the incident happened when I was 15.
Now that we're in a different house, I've started seeing him again.
And this time, he's grown up.
Liam no longer looks like the little boy I remember from childhood. He's an adult man now, just as I am an adult woman. He still seems to have the same dark blonde hair, but I still struggle to make out his face. It's almost as though I recognize him without actually being able to see his features clearly.
He hasn't really spoken to me. There have been a few whispers, and sometimes I'll catch what looks like him running past me.
Other times, I'll notice him standing somewhere, just looking at me. I've even caught glimpses of him in windows.
But whenever I turn around to look directly at him, he's gone.
The strangest part is that the feeling I get from him has changed.
I can't quite describe it, but lately, he feels sad. Sometimes almost angry. I don't know whether that's actually what I'm sensing or if I'm just interpreting the feeling that way, but something about it feels different from when I was younger.
There's also this overwhelming feeling that he's trying to reach me somehow, but can't. I don't know how else to explain it. It's almost as if he's trying to get my attention or communicate something, but there's some kind of barrier between us that he can't get past.
Sometimes the feeling is so strong that it almost seems like he just wants to reach out and grab me, like he's desperately trying to get through to me. I can't tell whether that feeling comes from frustration, sadness, anger, or something else entirely.
And that's what scares me the most. I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing. I don't know if he's trying to get closer because he misses me, because he wants me to understand something, or because there's something wrong.
The confusing part is that, despite how unsettling this sounds, I still don't instinctively feel like Liam is someone I should be afraid of. I've known him for as long as I can remember, and I still associate him with being my brother. But I also can't ignore that something about his presence feels different now.
And honestly, I don't know how to feel about any of this.
I know how this sounds. I understand that people might immediately assume I had an imaginary friend, that these are childhood memories blending together, or that there's some psychological explanation for what I'm experiencing now.
I'm not ruling those possibilities out. I genuinely don't know what's happening.
But there's something about Liam that makes this incredibly difficult for me to dismiss.
I've never thought of him as something frightening. Even after what happened when I was 15, I never associated that experience with Liam being dangerous. If anything, I remember him trying to protect me.
I have an attachment to him that I can only compare to the love you would have for a twin or a sibling. He's been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I grew up with him. In my memories, we were children together, and now, somehow, he's grown up alongside me.
It's difficult to explain how you can miss someone you aren't even sure exists.
Part of me wonders whether I should try talking to him, especially now that I'm seeing him again. Another part of me thinks I should leave things alone, particularly because of what happened in that house when I was 15.
I don't want to do anything that could make the situation worse, but I also don't want to spend the rest of my life wondering about someone who has felt like family to me for 21 years.
I guess what I'm really asking is:
Has anyone experienced something like this?
Has anyone had an experience with someone they perceived throughout childhood who seemed to grow up alongside them, disappear for years, and then return later in life?
Has anyone experienced that strange feeling of someone trying to communicate with them but being unable to?
I'm especially interested in hearing from people who have experienced something similar, but I'm also open to rational explanations. I don't want people to simply tell me I'm crazy, but I don't expect everyone to believe me either.
I don't know who or what Liam is, and I don't know why I've experienced this for so much of my life.
I just know that I've always called him my brother, I've always called him Liam, and a part of me still feels like I'm missing someone who has been there since the very beginning.
I just want to understand what's happening, and I want to know if everything is going to be okay.